Soft and Hard sides of Project Management

For last two decades at least, there has been a detailed discussion about soft side of project management including cultural issues or simply the human side of project management. The idea has been to make research about various issues related to success or failure of any project. Soft side of projects is somewhat not measurable or hard enough to be felt. Team tussles or cultural differences along with communication and human resource management are four important issues related to soft side of projects. 

However in this discussion about soft side of projects, the hard side of projects i.e. the success was undermined. Instead the term lessons learned became a fashion. Now the world is full of lessons learned but is left with less number of solutions learned. 

It is difficult to manage soft side of a project, true - but using the hard side i.e. goals, procedures, deadlines and control can help projects to be successful. The bottom line should be that no hard side of any project should be bargained for the sake of soft side's survival. Yes the soft side is critical but achieving a well declared target could be more important. 

Instead of using the soft side issues to figure out hurdles in reaching target, the soft side should be modified in a way which paves the path to reach the target. The hard side should provide the outer boundaries in which all soft sides can be managed and not the vice versa. The only exception could be some social projects where purpose is not to achieve a certain target but just to stir up the beneficiaries. 

Project Managers' Biggest Fear

Many of us may say that a Project Manager's biggest fear is failure of a project. Others may come up with ideas of delay or team tussles. However the biggest fear of a project management is the fear to delegate. Delegate is a key to success of many project managers and also a path towards failure.

Project managers fear delegating considering, only they can do the said job in perfect manner, the other will not be able to do with perfection and may be other won't do the way it should be done. These three simple fears have three simple solutions. Find team members who are better than you. This fact is highlighted by Guy Kawasaki (#SVBCEO) in his speech about, '12 Lessons I learned from Steve Jobs'. Secondly train your team members, invest in them prepare them to perform better and lastly tell them clearly how a certain activity is to be done.