Project management achievement is not only explicit but also “tacit should be included”

It’s very easy for people who work in specific job like programmer, quality assurance, network engineer etc, to identify their achievement. These people have already deliverables in hands and they are explicit result.

You can say that the explicit achievement of project manager are “the job done with no scope creep, no additional cost and deliver on time” and “how many projects were delivered”.

These are ridiculous things. Why? …. Because these are very basic things that each project manager has to do. There is no value added and useless point for repeating and sharing the same achievement, same project, same thing as team members claimed.

It’s very hard for professional/certified project manager who keep trying to tell people who don’t understand project management that “We” as a project manager are not only make the project done (which is explicit result) but also do “else” (which is tacit result).

What are “else”?

From more than 10 years experience, I am trying very hard to make these areas acknowledge from people, especially the management. Some of them knows but most of them… don’t care.

For example, looking at the approach areas here:

• Process = You create and set up the processes then people follow the processes and use templates. → Explicit result
• Deliverables = project deliverables, tools and templates deliverables → Explicit result
• People = ??? → Tacit
• Strategy = ??? → Tacit

So you see that it is very hard to explain and claim these tacit areas.

People

I kinda surprised that in some organization. They said they do care the people but they don’t want to hear the achievement in term of people from project manager perspective.

In some organization, they use scrum for software development. They knows that we have 5 scrum values:

• commitment
• focus
• openness
• respect
• courage

I am trying to say that

• “See… our team have commitment and this team made the commitment and they always hit 80% of commitment”
• “See… in the team, they do self-managing team and focus on their work, more over they also do support across the team and we have the time logging which proved that they do focus on sprint goals and deliver value product.”
• “See… via scrum activity like retrospective, we do openness to each other and come up with the improvement every sprint. We evolved a lot from the beginning.”
• “See… with respect to each other and trust them, we have the same goals to achieve. We believe that everyone in the team, do the best. We also support each other. So the team is working very hard and as you see we deliver the best thing in every sprint”
• “See… with encourage people and engage the team, everyone loves their product, they take ownership in every single part of product. They also be a part of making decision for product improvement in every sprint.”

Sad thing

• Other people in organization don’t care.

Strategy

Not only the knowledge but also the strategy that project manager use. It is very hard to tell to other people:

• What is the strategy for creating our product?
• What is the strategy that I use for manage the people and team work?
• What is the ground/special rules for the team that we set up to make the team to be self-managing and deliver incremental value product?

I am trying to say that

• “See… Team really do understand MVP that it is not only the functionalities focus but also the emotional design.”
• “See… Before we stated with forming and it’s very hard to bring them together but via our scrum events, we can bring them back and the team is on adjourning stage in Tuckman’s Theory.”
• “See… We do agree together not only the project manager but also our team member wants to hit and achieve 80% deliverable in each sprint.”

Sad thing

• Other people in organization don’t care.

Summary

It’s very sad for project manager. Not only me faces this problem, but other project managers also face on the same thing.

I try to tell myself that “even 99% people don’t care about tacit achievement, but there is 1% still do care about tacit achievement”

Although I am the only one who do care about “People” and “Strategy”, It is fine. I don’t care the others thought.

I don’t want to be a project manager who make the job done but I want to be a professional project manager who concern about explicit and tacit result.