PM at The City of X

Having completed a Computer Science degree, you’d think they might have covered project management skills. However that is not the case, as the work consisted mostly of algorithms, encryption (yuck!), and other nerdy things. Therefore when I began my career at The City of X (municipal government) post-graduation, I knew nothing about PM; so much so that it could have hit me over the head and I wouldn’t have noticed.

Shortly after commencing work, I was assigned to a team that was tasked with rolling out the newest version of the ERP system in use, JDEdwards, and was struck by all the planning and meetings that went on. Was it really necessary to meet once a week, just to talk about how things were going? Not to mention the monthly meetings where they invited everyone and Prime Minister. And what about all this documentation? It really seemed like they were trying to make more work for people! Do we really need all these signatures to make a change? At the time I thought, ‘cannot they not just tell us what do to and go away for two months while we do it?’ There was also the issue of the steering committee, which at the time seemed like a bunch of talking heads whose role was to check in on each other for comfort’s sake. What a bunch of bureaucratic fluff.

Flash forward eight years; was I ever wrong. What had seemed to me at the time like a lot of wasted time and effort was in fact the flawless execution of project management procedures and skill. My ill-informed perspective was unable to see the value of all those meetings, documentation, and communication. I naively assumed that all projects ran that smoothly, even in the absence of all that ‘extra’ work we were tasked with. In reality, those procedures led to successful projects; time after time. Communication was effective and structured, everyone knew their tasks and expectations, and issues or concerns were communicated immediately to the appropriate individuals. The PM procedures delivered IT value to both internal customers and taxpayers; ensuring that large projects ran smoothly, on-time, and on-budget.