Until relatively recently the research into project management has focused on the skills, knowledge and procedures of project management in the context of an “iron triangle” of time, cost and quality (or scope) constraints. Even now if you take a look at some of the key project handbooks by the likes of Turner, Simister, Morris & Pinto, or industry standards such as the PMI’s Project Managers Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) you’ll see what I mean.
However, just because you’ve got the qualification doesn’t mean you will be a successful project manager. The same applies in the agile world.
Experience has a large role to play, but perhaps more importantly is the leadership style of the project manager. Any successful project manager will tell you that in order to get things done they have to adopt their style depending on the organisational context, whether it is being autocratic with a team or consensual with stakeholders. Its how you engage with others and the relationships you build that ultimately determines how successful you are.
Clearly success doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but if you follow the prescribed process and have the ability to adapt your style to get things done then the likelihood of success will be higher, at least in the eyes of your sponsor and stakeholders.
This is where it gets interesting, because there is no clear definition of what project success is, nor how to measure it. What constitutes project success remains a contentious issue within the project management world, and it will differ between organisations, teams, stakeholders and academics. But that’s for another post.
When it comes to leadership the ‘traditional’ project manager clearly differs from their agile equivalent. Recent empirical research has indicated that successful traditional project managers appear to exhibit a greater reliance upon managerial (MQ) and intellectual competencies (IQ) (Geoghegan & Dulewicz, 2006; Muller & Turner, 2007), whereas their successful agile counterparts tend to exhibit a greater dependency upon emotional competencies (Porthouse & Dulewicz, 2007).
Emotional competencies are another way of saying emotional intelligence (EQ) and this has been defined as “the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing our emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships” (Goleman, 1998).
I’m not saying that traditional project managers don’t rely upon EQ when managing their teams, far from it. However, when I reflect on how I managed traditional projects in the past I usually defaulted to a transactional leadership style, more concerned with meeting milestones on a schedule, and telling teams what they must do, and when by, rather than what they could do.
Although this is an anecdotal example, and an oversimplification, it does imply that this is typical behaviour for a traditional project manager, especially where the research is concerned. More time and energy is spent on the process and the mechanisms of control (the MQ and IQ), rather than focusing on coaching and empowering the team (the EQ) to take on a self-organising character and affording them full authority to do whatever it needs to do to achieve their goals.
In the next post in this series I’ll present a framework that can be used to determine the types of competencies required for a successful agile project manager, and how these relate to a standard definition of MQ, IQ and EQ dimensions. It won’t be a guarantee for success, but rather it will help individuals or organisations to tailor learning and development initiatives and begin to think about the types of skills and competencies required to deliver agile projects and initiatives.
REFERENCES
Geoghegan, L. and Dulewicz, V. (2006) Project managers’ leadership competencies and project success. Henley Working Paper HWP 0607. Henley-on-Thames, Henley Management College.
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with Emotional Intelligence. London, Bloomsbury.
Muller, R. and Turner, J. R. (2007) “Matching the project manager’s leadership style to project type/” International Journal of Project Management 25(1): 21-32.
Porthouse, M. S. and Dulewicz, V. (2007) Agile Project Managers Leadership Competecies. Henley Working Paper HWP 0714. Henley-on-Thames, Henley Managemet College.
