How Many Project Managers Do You See – On Your Project?

By David L. Pells

I have always liked those puzzles where one is challenged to find hidden objects in a picture.  Perhaps faces or foxes or footballs, often in a maze or jumble of images.  Recently I have seen a computer game based on the same challenge, in that case, to find objects among a jumble of images in various rooms in a home – bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, garage, etc.

There is a similar puzzle on most projects – how many projects or subprojects are there and how many project managers?  These questions are probably much more important than most of us realize.  And the answer to this question can have significant implications related to the risks and the probability of success of any given project (or program).  Taken across industries, this can also help explain the rapid rise and spread of project management and the PM profession.

In classic project management, we are taught that every project should have one and only one project manager.  While this might be true, it is also highly unlikely and not necessarily entirely true.  In my opinion, it is seldom true.  Let me explain.

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