Beyond the Gantt Chart: Why Resilience Is the Most Important Skill for Project Managers
Beyond the Gantt Chart: Why Resilience Is the Most Important Skill for Project Managers
Gantt charts are widely used in projects. They are often part of the project planning phase and give a linear visual overview for the flow of working and expected progress throughout a project lifecycle. In complex projects, where there are multiple stakeholders and team members can be on dispersed locations, multi-lingual and multi-cultural, some kind of visual presentation of a project break down is necessary. In complex projects, Gantt charts can be useful in many ways
Based on the project scope and major milestones, Gantt charts are developed, and they provide a structured view of the project phases and major milestones, along with those dependencies that exist between phases or work items.
Gantt charts can vary in their level of detail, depending on the project’s requirements and the stakeholders’ needs. An example of details in Gantt charts is estimated work effort for specific work item, duration of the work, the type of speciality needed and even names of team members that are assigned to each work item.
Gantt charts are very important for project managers, they are also useful for providing a visual view that can be grasped by different parties, such as project owners on both buyers and vendors side, project management board and project team members.
What happens when (not if) things don’t go according to plan ?
In complex projects, adaptability and flexibility are driving forces for progress. While Gantt charts are useful in planning, they lack the flexibility needed for the unpredictability of complex projects. This unpredictability makes resilience essential to ensure project deliverables.
There are incidents that are out-of-scope for anyone in the project team to control. For example, delays in delivery from third-party vendors or technical defect in their software or equipment. Personal circumstances for team members that requires them to withdraw from the project team, non-constructive communication methods, dispute over financial items, lack of engagement from the buyers’ employees, expectations to team members is unclear, communication to and from project management team is inadequate and the project is starting to seem like there are three teams on the soccer field and none of them knows who is the opponent or the co-player team.
This is of course only a fraction of what can occur in one week within a complex project.
Being able to lead and manage a complex project, requires that project managers have the skill of resilience. Project managers constantly need to focus on solutions and be quick to adapt to incidents, whether those are technical or human related. During high-pressure times in a project lifecycle, project managers need not only be able to practice resilience for the project team and other stakeholders, but they also need to be skilled in self-compassion to manage and maintain their well-being.
Resilience is a skill that every project manager leading complex projects needs to strengthen and continuously grow.
What are you doing to continue building your resilience and what techniques do you use to practise self-compassion during intensive and stressful times?
