TIME MANAGEMENT FOR PROJECT MANAGERS
Effective time management is one of the most difficult chores facing even the most
experienced managers. For a manager who manages well-planned repetitive tasks,
effective time management can be accomplished without very much pain. But for a project
manager who must plan, schedule, and control resources and activities on unique,
one-of-a-kind projects or tasks, effective time management may not be possible because of
the continuous stream of unexpected problems that develop.
This exercise is designed to make you aware of the difficulties of time management both in
a traditional organization as well as in a project environment. Before beginning the
exercise, you must make the following assumptions concerning the nature of the project:
You are the project manager on a project for an outside customer.
The project is estimated at $3.5 million with a time span of two years.
The two-year time span is broken down into three phases: Phase I—one year,
beginning February 1; Phase II—six months; Phase III—six months. You are
now at the end of Phase I. (Phases I and II overlap by approximately two
weeks. You are now in the Monday of the next to the last week of Phase I.)
Almost all of the work has been completed.
Your project employs thirty-five to sixty people, depending on the phase that
you are in.
You, as the project manager, have three full-time assistant project managers
that report directly to you in the project office: an assistant project manager
each for engineering, cost control, and manufacturing. (Material
procurement is included as part of the responsibilities of the manufacturing
assistant project manager.)
Phase I appears to be proceeding within the time, cost, and performance
constraints.
You have a scheduled team meeting for each Wednesday from 10—12 A.M.
The meeting will be attended by all project office team members and the
functional team members from all participating line organizations. Line
managers are not team members and therefore do not show up at team
meetings. It would be impossible for them to show up at the team meetings
for all projects and still be able to function as a line manager. Even when
requested, they may not show up at the team meeting because it is not
effective time management for them to show up for a two-hour meeting
simply to discuss ten minutes of business. (Disregard the possibility that a
team meeting agenda could resolve this problem.)
It is now Monday morning and you are home eating breakfast, waiting for your car pool to
pick you up. As soon as you enter your office, you will be informed about problems,
situations, tasks, and activities that have to be investigated. Your problem will be to
accomplish effective time management for this entire week based on the problems and
situations that occur.
