Project Management Playbook
Practical project management insights and tools to help water professionals lead with confidence.
I am sure many of you have been handed guidelines or internal corporate norms.
A common document may be the project management playbook, especially for those who are aiming for or already have a certain management role.
As everyone today is a "manager," in our industry I see many professionals with more or less accurate technical skills, but who really fail when it comes to certain management skills.
This is actually the main source of dissatisfaction, struggle, and complexity: managing people, navigating internal bureaucracy, understanding the purpose of each stakeholder, handling complaints about lack of resources, dealing with pressure from higher levels, meeting deadlines, controlling the budget, minimizing risks, and understanding contract terms.
In our community, there are water professionals with a diverse range of specializations, from desalination to wastewater treatment plants, investment, wet networks, NGOs, stewardship, industrial water, hydropower…
They all have one thing in common: there's a daily job to be done within a project framework, conditioned by many aspects.
Once you know and understand all the frameworks and aspects that condition a project in our water industry, you'll be much more prepared.
That's why I'm creating our own Project Management Playbook.
It won't be full of empty words or documents that nobody reads because they are all theory.
This is the handbook I would hand to anyone joining my team. It’s about reflecting reality, sometimes shaped by human nature itself.
This series of essays will contain actionable knowledge, something you can retain and apply to better manage yourself and others.
If I were to create a structure or summary of the playbook, it would tentatively be something like this: