Move Over Project Management. Project Leadership is the Key Now.

Are you ready for this? There’s good news and bad news. First, the bad news – project management is rapidly taking on a new, additional dimension. This will mean extra work, smarter people, better tools or some combination of the aforegoing. Now the good news – if you can integrate this new dimension into your enterprise or organizational projects, your business stands to go further, be more profitable, satisfy more customers and motivate more employees. This extra dimension is project leadership. Not just project management. And before you dismiss this as another whimsical idea from the HR department, there’s something you should know.

Doing Things Right vs. Doing the Right Things

This is perhaps the simplest and the best way to compare management (do things right) with leadership (do the right things). Both are essential for making an enterprise function successfully. However, project management has often, as its name indicates, focused on doing things right – the management part. Doing the right things was not the main focus. There was a project specification and the project manager’s job was to get on with it. That’s the bit that’s changing. Companies are facing up to the fact that projects need better leadership if the products and services they produce are to compete successfully. Turning out a perfectly built, rigorously tested blue widget on time and on budget is no good if the market has since veered 90 degrees to favor green thingummies [Editor's Note: That's British for Thingamajig].

Can Software Improve Leadership?

Now that software is eating the world (as Marc Andreessen puts it), it’s only natural to ask if it can also take over leadership duties. Well, not yet. However, the right kind of project management software can be a valuable support for better project leadership. It does this by facilitating project leadership aspects like:

• Shared project vision. Where management is more about making best progress along a pre-defined route, leadership is concerned with mapping out the end destination. Collaborative software tools can let the team at any time where it’s headed. PM apps encouraging collaboration include Wrike, Clarizen and AtTask.


• Communication. Project leadership focuses on openness, directness and providing a connection between the team and the rest of the organization. Whether it’s email, blogging or micro-blogging, leadership involves communication. Examples are Easy Projects and Zoho Projects.


• Integrity. Having the right values, following them and demonstrating that adherence is all part of project leadership. These values come out in exchanges with project team members and the actions taken. Project management (or leadership) software that provides transparency and digestible information paves the way for trust. See how Intervals, Mavenlink and AffinityLive Projects let you handle this.


• Lead change. Change and the future in general are easier to handle if you’re the one deciding what will happen. Sometimes however incidents and their accompanying stress just land on you and you have to do your project leadership ‘after the fact’. In that case, smart, flexible PM apps that don’t need a diploma in rocket science can help you react quickly and bring projects and their schedules back under control. LiquidPlanner, JIRA and Genius Project are examples.

Will Your PM App Suit or Cramp Your Style as a Leader?

Leadership style can vary enormously. Sometimes it’s a personal thing – you prefer or feel more comfortable using one approach, rather than another. At other times, the best leadership style may be dictated by the situation. For example, if your enterprise is fighting for survival, you may need to tell people what to do. On the other hand, if things are going well and you want to build a strong project team for the future, then collaboration, discussion and empowerment may be better choices.

• Command and control. Or “Don’t argue, get on with it”. Less in favor in these enlightened times, command and control may still be required in crisis situations. C&C leaders need PM apps that let them communicate clearly, check results and receive appropriate progress reports.


• Put it to the vote. Democratic or consensus-driven project leadership seeks to involve the team to improve participation, productivity and decision-making. The flip side is that this process takes a little longer and may make it more difficult to achieve on-time, on-budget results.


• Empowerment. Builds on the notion that fully engaged team members can set their own goals, possibly more ambitious than the ones their management would have set them. Smaller, ‘on-the-job’ groups react faster and more productively to local issues. The risk is a perceived laxity in leadership and possible loss of overall focus.


• Servant leadership. A style that has become popular with agile project management and processes like Scrum. The leader ensures the process is kept to and caters to the needs of the team so that each member can get his or her job done properly.

But here’s an important point. You may not succeed, at least in the longer term, if you stick to just one style of project leadership. To paraphrase the popular saying, if your only project leadership tool is a hammer, you may see every project challenge as a nail. Sooner or later, each of the styles above and also the many others that have been defined will bump up against its limits.

Picking Your PM Software

So it’s wise to look for PM apps that offer flexibility to let you vary your project leadership style as needed. PM apps for related functionality include:

• Task management (Wrike)


• Newsfeed (Wrike), real time team updates (Clarizen)


• Discussions within tasks (Wrike)


• Time-tracking (Wrike, Mavenlink)


• Centralize project collaboration (Mavenlink)


• Time and resource planning, time approval process (AffinityLive Projects)


• Collaborative planning (Clarizen, AtTask)


• Issue tracking (Clarizen, JIRA)


• Mobile app for iPhone and Android (empowerment) (Clarizen), Mobile version (Easy Projects)


• Explicit agile and scrum support (JIRA, Genius Project, Projectplace)


• Built-in online/phone conferencing (Easy Projects)


• Online project chat (Zoho Projects)


• Easy scheduling (ProWorkflow)


• Risk and change management (Genius Project)


• Priority-based scheduling (LiquidPlanner)


• Drag-and-drop prioritization (LiquidPlanner)


• Project dashboard (Intervals)


• Weekly timesheet submissions (Intervals)

Time to Do the Right Thing?

With free Project Management software trials available from the GetApps project management software listings, you can check out these possibilities at no cost. See which one best suits your style as a project manager and leader and make the most of the trial period to try out the added project leadership value.

Move Over Project Management. Project Leadership is the Key Now.