Small Rudder, Large Ship

Understanding the Crucial Difference Between Project Management Teams and Project Teams

Sometimes it proves useful to explicitly clarify matters that intuitively seem self-evident.

Upon closer examination of common project management terms, I find that not everything is as clear as assumed. This is precisely what causes misunderstandings in collaboration. People wonder why things don’t run as smoothly as they would like.

For this reason, I want to discuss the following terms in this article:

• Management

• Manager

• Project Management

• Project Management Team

• Project Team

• Project Management Office

• Project Management Support

• Program Management Office

You see, that’s quite a long list. So let me get started right away.

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Management

When it comes to the term “management,” we need to distinguish:

Do we mean the activity itself or the people who perform it?

I’ll first focus on the activity and then address the role.

Managing Is More Than Giving Instructions!

The biggest misunderstanding arises from the fact that “managing” is often understood only as interaction between manager and employee.

But it’s much more than that!

Unfortunately, it’s also frequently the case that managers inadequately perform these other aspects as well. Which further reinforces this false perception.

So what does managing actually include?

There’s an abundance of literature that defines the topic very differently.

Therefore, I’m presenting a model here that I consider most effective based on my professional experience.

Managing includes: Setting Goals, Planning, Commissioning Work and Deploying Resources, Preventing or Solving Problems and Evaluating Results.

If you have a different opinion on this, please write to me in the comments—I’m very interested:

Now let’s look at the activities which belong to managing:

Setting Goals

Managing begins with setting goals.

Clarity about goals is the prerequisite for any efficient work.

However, defining goals is not a matter of inspiration—it’s hard, time-consuming work in itself.

Typically, you start with one or more predetermined goals.

To avoid going too deep here, I’m deliberately leaving out goal derivation from visions and strategies.

Goals to be achieved must be cascaded into sub-goals:

• For topics

• For organizational units or individuals

• For time periods

Planning

Once goals are found, planning begins on how the goals can be achieved.

• What activities are required?

• How much time do the activities need?

• Who will be needed for execution?

• What conditions and prerequisites must exist?

• What dependencies must be considered?

• How can partial results and goal achievement be measured?

• Who must make which decision when?

Commissioning Work and Deploying Resources

The next step is the one that management is often mistakenly reduced to.

Employees are commissioned to perform their activities according to the plan and develop content.

Resources such as budgets, work time, or work tools are provided.

Decisions relating to content work are made or triggered.

Preventing or Solving Problems

Plans rarely work out as intended. Therefore:

Managing includes anticipating deviations early and taking countermeasures.

Evaluating Results

Once results are on the table, it must be evaluated whether the set goals have actually been achieved.

The evaluation forms the basis for further action.

Manager

Employees who perform these activities are called managers.

I consider it very important that managers personally execute all these aspects of management and don’t completely delegate individual ones.

This doesn’t mean that a manager can’t obtain support or input.

Quite the contrary: Management is also teamwork. I’ll come back to this later when discussing the management team.

Conversely, however, a manager should really only manage and not perform content work themselves.

Especially in development environments, it’s not uncommon for managers to also possess domain knowledge.

Mixing both fields of activity typically leads to poor management performance.

Although executives are often called managers, personnel responsibility is by no means a prerequisite for the manager role.

Conversely, executives can and should also manage. In fact, management activities are an essential component of every leadership role—personnel management is then added on top.

Unfortunately, I frequently observe that executive-managers only personally perform the steps “commissioning work” and “evaluating results” and either omit or delegate the other steps.

That’s not good! It’s the cause of many problems we see in companies.

All steps require the same attention, have the same priority, and must be performed by the manager themselves. If they don’t do this, they cannot deliver high-performance management.

Believe me, I’ve made this mistake myself and suffered the consequences bitterly.

I frequently observe that executives neglect goal definition and planning because they believe they don’t have time for it—or because they think everything is already clear and known anyway.

A Side Note:

Assistants are an important resource because they support executives in management and thus contribute to better management performance.

Bosses who want to eliminate assistant positions for cost reasons have not understood how top-level management works.

Project Management

The starting point of every project is goals specified by the project’s stakeholders.

To realize these project goals, two areas of activity are required:

1. Managing

2. Implementing

Managing

Just as described above, management activities must be performed in the project.

The project goals must be broken down into sub-goals along the three project dimensions: cost, time, and performance.

Based on this, the project plan is created, the project team is commissioned, and investment funds are released.

To control project risks, professional risk management is conducted: risks are regularly analyzed, preventive measures defined and planned.

Work results are discussed promptly within the team and with stakeholders. Confirmed results are a prerequisite for reliable and continuous maturity progression.

Implementing

Simultaneously with the project, work on the project content begins, which proceeds exactly as worked out by project management.

A continuous alignment must take place between content activities and project management activities.

Project management takes place before the content processing of project scopes. But then accompanies the implementation activities. Goals, plans, and results must be constantly adapted to realities.

Project Management Team

The project management team consists of:

• The Project Manager

• The Project Management Master

• The Project Architect

• The Department Representatives

Each of them has their own area of responsibility in which they perform management activities. You can read the details in the respective articles.

Depending on the size of the organization, it may make sense for the department representative—who is essentially a kind of project manager for the department—to also have a department project management master at their side.

These project roles exclusively perform project management tasks, should be freed up for these tasks, and work in only one project.

As already indicated in the heading, too many cooks spoil the broth. It’s important to have only the minimally necessary number of employees, each with a clear focus.

Only this way is it possible to ensure excellent situational awareness at all times. This is the basic prerequisite for good project management. Too many people means too many interfaces, unclear task distribution and responsibility.

Project Team

The project team includes all employees who work on the project scope.

It doesn’t matter whether they are exclusively assigned to the project, work in parallel on multiple projects, or are only temporarily involved.

The number of project team members is determined solely by necessity, as determined by the project management team during planning.

The rule here is: whoever is needed is part of the team—the number of employees is determined only by necessity and therefore has no lower or upper limit.

Unlike the project management team, the project team doesn’t work exclusively on content work.

Members of the project team also take on project management tasks within their area of responsibility as part of self-responsibility and self-management.

This includes the detailed definition of goals as well as detailed planning of workflows and coordination of collaboration. As experts, they provide important input for risk management and develop the results that are confirmed in project reviews.

Project Management Office

For the Project Management Office, we need to distinguish how this term is used.

I know two different interpretations.

A Project Management Office is sometimes the area in the office where the project management team has their workspaces.

I just listed who belongs to the project management team. If project management supporters are also present, they also sit in the Project Management Office.

Spatial concentration in the Project Management Office is highly recommended. It enables the visualization of important project information on the walls—from project plans to risk portfolios to task boards.

At the same time, it facilitates spontaneous exchange and coordination, so that all project managers always share the same situational assessment.

The Project Management Office can also be the meeting room where project meetings take place.

The other version of a Project Management Office is independent of the actual project.

In the Project Management Office, project management experts are brought together who are responsible for project management methods and project portfolios.

Here, company-internal project management standards are developed, defined, and brought to decision.

Training, qualifications, and experience exchange for project managers are organized. Planning and coaching experts can be pooled here, which projects can access as needed.

In addition, the PMO typically selects the project management tools, decides on their use, and adapts them to the organization’s needs.

The Project Management Office typically reports to the board of management about the state of project management in the organization.

It maintains an overview of the entire project portfolio and evaluates whether sufficient project management resources are available to professionally handle the projects.

In case of bottlenecks, it coordinates the deployment of external resources.

Project Management Support

Project management supporters are employees who support project management members in conducting project management.

This typically includes the following activities:

• Planning meetings

• Writing minutes

• Tracking task completion

• Updating schedules

• Preparing project status reports

• Helping project members work with the project management tool

These are administrative activities.

As the name suggests, the project management supporter is intended as assistance and capacity relief for project managers and project members.

However, one must note that delegating these administrative activities creates an additional interface between supporter and responsible person, which inevitably leads to efficiency losses.

Therefore, I favor optimizing tools, processes and user interfaces so that those responsible can smoothly handle these tasks themselves without being significantly burdened.

So if many project management supporters are needed, it’s a sign of poor tools or poor collaboration culture.

I also frequently observe that project management supporters are deployed where processes are not regulated or corresponding subject matter experts are missing.

Such situations can occur in different contexts, mostly tracking activities.

If you deploy PMSs for such activities, something is wrong with your organization.

Anyone who has their projects under control without PMSs is very likely working in a very good environment.

The need to deploy PMSs should therefore always be an occasion to carefully analyze what they’re needed for and how the situation can be improved so it works without them.

Program Management Office

Let’s conclude with the Program Management Office.

Here too, there are two different scenarios.

The Program Management Office can take on the role of the Project Management Office.

In organizations that strongly bundle projects into programs, cross-project and cross-program methodological competence as well as project management governance can also be bundled in a Program Management Office.

Another possibility is to spatially concentrate all program managers and platform architects in one office, thereby improving exchange and cross-program collaboration.

The situation is therefore relatively similar to the Project Management Office.

Head of PMO

I’d like to conclude by pointing out one special feature.

Project Management or Program Management Offices with cross-project or cross-program responsibility are independent organizational units with an organizational chart and a head of PMO. The PMO leader is accordingly anchored in the company hierarchy.

Project management team members, on the other hand, don’t report to the project leader but either to the PMO leader or—in the case of department representatives—to their respective department heads.

Project leaders are often called project managers, both of which suggest that they have disciplinary personnel responsibility.

I know it’s absolutely common to organizationally place project management team members under the project leader. However, this has significant disadvantages, which I’ll discuss in detail soon.

So please subscribe to my newsletter so you don’t miss these articles.

Few Steering the Ship, Many Working on Deck

I’ve only covered the selected terms in their essential features here.

Nevertheless, it should have become clear why it makes sense to have a focused and lean project management team in a project and to clearly distinguish it from the significantly larger number of project team members doing content work.

Therefore, pay close attention in my articles whether I’m talking about the project management team or the project team—these are two fundamentally different things.

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