Don’t just believe every slide

I’ve been a project manager with total commitment for 10 years now. I have worked internationally with various partners, mainly in the automotive sector, as well as with multiple business units and top external consultants. Within the framework of classic project development, concept development, and organizational projects up to task force and PMO management with direct board participation, I was able to develop and gain experience — and be certified as a Senior Project Manager. Here I would like to show you skills and situations which, in my experience, make a successful project manager.

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Don’t just believe every slide

A common situation in any project is a negative test report communicated by development during a test. For example, the value from the measurement compared to the requirement is shown on the left. Measures are suggested which of course cause a delay and increase costs. Over the next few weeks, the project will discuss the implementation of the measures and what compromises have to be made. Suddenly it turns out that, for example, the measurement result is not plausible in comparison with similar products — or the necessary value was not read correctly from a table.

What I painfully had to learn in different situations — do not to believe every slide. As a project manager, you will certainly not be able to compete with any technical experts. Question the situations, let them show you the circumstances and sources and explain the conclusions. Understand how much interpretation there is in the statement and where the requirement comes from. Create comparability with other projects to create a plausible basis.

With the above procedure, you create a trust for yourself that this step is necessary and you can also explain the causes and effects to other stakeholders in a valid way. On the other hand, your experts understand that they cannot lightly address topics that are not valid just to gain more security, for example.

Expert tip: I often play dumb here — go to the experts and tell them that I’m new here and would just like to learn and understand. Then I ask a few simple questions about cause and effect — that’s usually enough to get an idea and later be able to explain it to management.

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