Great skills can get lost in a large organization. A good project manager can help find them.

I was at a usability conference recently looking over books on human-computer interaction. Standing next to me was a usability expert who worked for a government agency. Each of the many departments in that agency had their own website. I’d been to one of those website and found it very hard to use. (It wasn’t her department’s site.) We started chatting about it and she totally agreed.

I asked her why she, as a usability expert, couldn’t do anything to improve that website. She told me that she was siloed into her own department. I asked why the user interface (UI) expert in that other department didn’t do anything to improve the website. She said that the other department doesn’t have a usability expert on their team. She is the only UI specialist in the whole agency.

She has a unique skill amongst hundreds of employees -but her skills are trapped in one department.

This struck me as being an unproductive, though not uncommon, situation. And this is the type of situation where a good, get more done, project manager can come in.

A good project manager has access to information that other team members don’t. Specifically, the project manager knows where specialized knowledge and skills are within an organization. The PM can be the eyes and ears across project teams for talent.

This is a unique position that a project manager can use to expand their role as a value-added member of an organization. In this role, resource allocation becomes more than simply finding who has time to do what. It goes beyond traditional project management methodology. Resource allocation becomes about placing the right resource on a project. The one that can help get the job done better, faster or more cost effectively.

Project managers can take two approaches to distributing project related information or project knowledge.

The first is to silo the information. This is generally the approach of a project management specialist. The idea is that project management is a brain-trust of information and that distribution of the information is most effective when its carefully managed. Specifically:

• The project manager consolidates project information
• The project manager publishes the information at specific times
• Others must ask the manager for the information
• Often requires calling meetings to share the information
• Or the information gets distributed in ways that make sense to the project manager.

Some of the consequences are that it:

• Is opaque in how information is gathered and why
• Builds a clique around the project manager
• Carefully controls the flow of information
• Can be politically and strategically useful in an organization
• Can be hard for others to use the information in the way the project manager presents it.

The biggest benefit to siloing information is that if the project manager can successfully become the funnel for all information they can effectively manage expectations and improve processes. The biggest downside is that the project manager often becomes a bottleneck for information and then, in frustration, people just ignore project management and see project managers as a hindrance to getting things done.

The second is to spread project information. This is generally the approach of a team leader or non-specialist who is given responsibility for managing a process. The idea here is that the project manager wears many hats and the faster information can be received or distributed the less time the manager has to spend collecting or publishing that information. Specifically:

• Information is quickly distributed
• It is centralized in one place that everyone knows about
• It is available to anyone with the proper access level
• It is dynamically updated with any new information
• Can be received and viewed whenever its convenient to each person.

Some of the consequences of spreading information are that it:

• Can break hierarchies of control
• Makes skills rather than knowledge more valuable in a team
• Brings transparency to a process
• Raises accountability
• Can make projects and teams harder to manage
• Makes it easier to improve a team’s performance.

The biggest benefit is that it allows non-specialists to manage projects and makes it easy to push a consistent way of tracking projects across a team. The biggest downside is that team members sometimes don’t care about the nitty gritty of a project (they just want to know what they have to work on) and can’t be bothered to contribute to information on the project.

I recommend a blended approach. Start from a place of spreading information but make sure that you cater the specific information to each person based on what they will need -and don’t go overboard with sharing information.

• A designer might just want to know the amount of time they have to deliver the project whereas
• a developer wants to know the specific deadline and functionality required.
• An executive needs customized metrics on projects they’re tracking whereas
• a client wants to know if things are on track or not.

On the other hand, if you let too much information flow out you will lose control and visibility on a project or task. A free flow of information can be constructive for collaboration on a deliverable. However, not everything is a collaborative process. Many projects and processes benefit from being monitored, measured and controlled.

QUESTION (from LinkedIn): Forecasting the same as prediction? Which one is more realistic and easier to do?

ANSWER: Forecasting is different from predicting. Predicting is much easier but far less accurate.

Predicting is when you start making guesses about things. For example, you predict that laying sheet-rock will take 45 hours to do and you guess that it will be done in 2 weeks.

Forecasting, on the other hand, is when you take information from past jobs and apply it to a new job. For example, if you have seen that laying the sheet-rock for a 3,000 sq ft space takes 65 hours and it usually done in 4 weeks then the next time you have to quote out the same job you’ll be able to forecast how much its going to cost and how long it will really take i.e. when it will really be done after work starts on it.

The big difference is predicting is based on your best guess from experience. Forecasting is based on data you’ve actually recorded and tracked from previous jobs.