Chapter 16: Becoming the Project Adult

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Overview

In this book, we have stepped through the basic responsibilities of a project manager. We have looked at how you start out with little or no understanding of the mission handed to you. From there, we discussed how to discover your requirements and then arrange for their birth. Last, we offered tips for guiding you, your team, and your deliverables through the challenges that the targeted environment will present to you during deployment and their subsequent handoff to operations.

My professional and technical boundaries have expanded greatly from the diversity of technologies, work environments, and project types I have experienced as a traveling professional project manager. Still, I find myself learning the same lessons over and over, only at more depth, or to better effect. Another way of putting this is that with each new project, one has the opportunity to gain greater insight into the process, and refine one's outlook and demeanor. I thought it would, therefore be useful to examine the characteristics that make an effective project manager. You can use this list to:

• Appraise yourself and build an effective self-improvement plan.

• Do a great job hiring a project manager for your next cumbersome initiative.

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