This has to be the best line I have heard about a project manager in a long time “our project manager can’t handle a one man, stand still parade!!”. A lot of frustration went into that comment.
I was discussing a project with a friend of mine from Oregon. He was talking through the horrors of an EMR conversion project he was going through. He was laying the issues for the project squarely at the feet of the project manager. With some deeper questioning I came to understand that the project manager (PM) was indeed missing some skills. However, at the same time, no one within the organization was supporting the PM. The PM wasn’t able to connect the proper resources, because he wasn’t respected by the line managers. The PM didn’t have control over the budget. The most telling thing was that the stakeholders were only involved in the project on paper. They weren’t supporting the PM at all.
The reality is that project management is not well understood in health care today. Some very large institutions (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, InterMountain Health) are excellent at project management and have a great grasp of what it takes to deliver a successful project. However, it seems the majority of institutions in the US lack the background knowledge to lead a successful project. Baseline Group states that this isn’t necessarily a health care only topic either.
Approximately 68% of companies surveyed were statistically unlikely to run a successful project, based on findings in the survey
So what are some solutions?
I think this comes down to a fundamental knowledge transfer of the value of project management to upper leadership. This will take time, and resource, and persistence. But the reality is, in a strapped budget, it is difficult for administrators to see the value in an extra FTE to “just run a project”. Additionally, I see a need to teach PM knowledge on a comprehensive basis to managers and team leads. We don’t all need to be PMPs, but it is really critical to have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of PM.
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