After this week's lecture, it's not hard to imagine that managing a project can get extremely overwhelming for one person. Especially during the execution of the project, the PM has so many responsibilities including, but not limited to: distributing information to the project team, verifying the scope of the project and adjusting the project if it changes, performing quality assurance checks on the project, developing the team, soliciting necessary information from management and vendors, selecting suppliers, managing relationships with vendors and stakeholders, and measuring project performance continuously. All of these tasks are necessary for any decently sized project in the medical device industry. I would assume that some of these projects need to have multiple project managers to ensure one person is not overloaded will all of these responsibilities.
How would one go navigating dynamics with multiple project managers? How would conflicts between them get solved? How would the work be split, by department, task, or something else?
What are the benefits and drawbacks at having more than one PM? I would imagine that although the benefit of a split workload is much easier for the PMs, it might increase risk of miscommunication and cause project delays.
Managing projects in the medical device industry entails a wide range of responsibilities, and the idea of having many project managers to help alleviate the effort seems reasonable. Navigating dynamics with several project managers necessitates open communication, teamwork, and clear roles and duties. Conflicts between project managers can be resolved by open conversation, consensus building, and, if necessary, the intervention of upper management or a neutral mediator. The division of work among PMs might be organized according to departmental expertise, task specialization, or project phase. While having many project managers might help to share the workload more equitably and focus more effectively, it can also create obstacles such as potential miscommunication, coordination concerns, and competing priorities. However, with efficient communication channels, coordination procedures, and a shared commitment to project success, the benefits of using many project managers, such as enhanced efficiency and agility, can exceed the disadvantages. Finally, successful collaboration among several PMs depends on a cohesive team dynamic, clear roles and duties, and a shared commitment to accomplishing project goals.
This is an interesting conversation to me because from my experience so far within the industry, I have not worked on a project where there was multiple project managers. There could be multiple people assisting the project manager in decision making and staying up to date on the timeline, but there is only one project manager because the responsibilities and outcomes essentially fall on their shoulders. Thsi was interesting because I never even thought about having multiple PMs for a project. I think the most essential function would be communication between the project managers, because that is already hard enough for one PM to handle alone but its even more important when multiple project managers would be getting communication from numerous members. Its easy to see how a lack of communication could severely affect a project timeline and even proper knowledge transfer. Thus, proper teamwork and communication between multiple PMs could definitely benefit a project to move along faster, especially if it is a critical project.
Like any good team, some type of established chemistry and repertoire should already exist between the PMs and team members, or atleast have some familiarity with their roles and responsibilities. Being able to come into a team with an previous relationship would allow the team to skip the curve of learning personalities, strengths and weaknesses, among other things that would take time to foster understanding for. Given that this is known, it would be wise to make clear to the team what are the functional responsibilities and managements of each PM to ensure there is no wasted time in communication and lapse of hierarchal chain of command. It is essential to have the team understand who to reach out and when. In terms of skill sets, each PM should bring some shared qualities that relate to the overall project but also have a unique skill or experience that would add value to the project that the team would not have already.
Being able to have two PMs allows more perspective and ideas to flow amongst the group, sparking greater thinking and POV to cover grounds and bases on different points. This type of innovative thinking would only only be hindered if the flow of order is not clearly established, as well as the coherent assignment of organizational charts.
In my opinion, there will be some benefits as well as drawbacks.
Benefits
1. Work distribution: multiple PMs can distribute work between them. It will decrease the workload of an individual PM.
2. Increase efficiency: Multiple PMs can be assigned according to their skills. It may also increase the efficiency of the work.
Drawbacks
1. Communication problem: As the number of people is increasing, the communication problem will also increase. Miscommunication can also happen between them.
2. Decision-making problem: Multiple PMs may have multiple viewpoints. Thus, it may lead to problems in decision-making. multiple PMs also make decisions slowly as all the PMs make the decision together or give their comments on decision-making.
3. Conflict: The risk of potential conflict increases as there are multiple PMs.
I think that the appropriate number of PMs for a project should be relative to the project size. You don't want too many PMs, where there is an overlap in tasks that causes redundancy and ineffective management. However, if you do not have too few PMs, then the project can suffer for inadequate management where responsibilities are unrealistically allotted to PMs. In a non-profit that I used to work for, this was effectively controlled through an "Impact Manager", which was an individual who oversaw the various PMs and ensured that projects were making a steps towards satisfying the project's scope/goals. This was really effective and it helped to ensure that the various PMs were organized and more efficient, rather than having each PM responsible for knowing all the intricacies of other projects. Naturally, this did lead to some bureaucratic nuisances with more paperwork to fill out and submit, but if this is balance properly, I think multiple project managers can be efficiently coordinated.
As mentioned in the responses above, there are multiple ways to navigate dynamics between multiple project managers. Establishing clear goals and responsibilities for each manager would diminish any confusion between them; moreover, tasks can be allocated depending on specific project requirements and associated expertise to further mitigate any difficulties with collaborating between the project managers.
Some benefits of having multiple project managers include having various specialization experts to cover all aspects of the projects and lead to its success and having thorough risk mitigation which is spread across the various project managers.
Some drawbacks of having multiple project managers include having challenges in coordinating with other project managers and having the potential for duplication or redundancy.
Navigating dynamics with multiple project managers can be challenging but manageable with clear communication, coordination, and a structured approach. The best way to overcome the potential challenges of having multiple managers is to establish clear roles among the project managers. These managers should have clear instructions on what aspect of the project to oversee. If this is not made clear from the beginning, then it could get confusing for both the managers and the team members.
Having multiple PM's can be a challenge, especially when they have different perspectives on how to get the work done. However, this does mean that having multiple PM's can also be a strength.
Make sure project managers communicate openly. Regular meetings and check-ins can help them talk and make sure everyone knows what each other is doing, what's important, and how things are going. Clearly say what each project manager's job is to avoid problems or confusion about who does what. Setting clear rules can help reduce arguments and ensure each manager is responsible for their projects. Encourage project managers to work together, especially when projects connect or depend on each other. Joint planning sessions can help spot possible problems or overlaps early and let them fix issues before they start.
