Project management is tough

Project management is a dirty job. It is all responsibility and tracking and taking the blame without the creative input and true control required for success. OK, maybe I'm being a little hard here. But too often I see project managers that get hit from all sides without the real authority to control what is going on with the project. Why is that? I wonder if you asked 10 people, would they come up with the same description of what a project manager is and does? More importantly, how do they interact with a project manager.

There's the Project Management Institute, with its standards, and that's great. On the day to day efforts, though, you have layered different methodologies, ideologies and disciplines in different departments that all come together for a single project. Can one person manage all that? In fact, how does one define a project? Who defines a project? And the fatal, "who owns this project?" For a project manager to be successful, the project manager must be entrusted with true authority. In return, the project manager must commit to a professional level of knowledge of what it takes to run a good project. That will bring job satisfaction to the hardest hit project manager.