Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management

1.3. The Project Manager

Instead of voicing these thoughts I said, "Okay."

"Good!" he said, clapping his hands together.My feeling of doom deepened.

"Now Ralph did, of course, impose a few conditions. Nothing too serious, nothing we can't work around."

Just what I like. Conditions set by the boss that you have to work around.

"For starters, I'll be the project sponsor, but you'll ultimately have to go to Ralph for spending approval."

"Right," I said. Oh good, I thought, up the bureaucratic ladder to the ultimate control freak before I can spend a dime. That will be fun.

"Ralph wants Al Burton on the project team." Stu looked at me, anticipating some kind of response.

"What!!" I screamed, "That asshole? The last project he was on was a total screw up. What the hell do we need—"

"As you know," Stu interrupted, "TQM was a complete success."

"That project was a disaster!" I retorted.

A year ago, when Total Quality Management was trendy, Ralph had assigned Al Burton to implement it at our plant. Al seemed the logical choice because he was an engineer, was head of Industrial and Production Engineering, and was the only Certified Project Manager at Hyler. Although it was supposed to have taken three months, according to Al, and cost $150,000, it was still going on, in a haphazard way. The bill was now almost $800,000. Since no objective had yet been established, other than to "do things in a quality way", no results had been achieved. Morale in the plant had never been worse.

Stu said, ...