Robert Green a PMs nightmare




Every PM will have this nightmare of things that can go wrong in a project. Just like Robert Green in England's opening match with the USA in this year's World Cup finals in South Africa. At a crucial point, when everything was looking good for the England team, Robert Green made a tragic error and allowed an equalizer for the US which turned out to cost the England team their 3 points for the match.


In every project, there will come a time when someone will drop the ball. What happens next is the crucial part. Rather then focusing on the event that caused the ball to be dropped, the PM will need to rally the team and help them to move on to complete the project, no matter how critical that event was. This is something that should be learnt from this match as this happened relatively early in the match and there was still plenty of time to rectify the situation. As a project manager or captain of the team Steve Gerrard should have rallied his troops and step up a gear to score another goal in order to rectify the situation. Depending on your point of view the PM role is held by Steve Gerrard or Fabio Capello the coach but in my opinion the captain of the team represents the PM role and the coach would be similar to the sponsor.

Risk management is one of the key roles of the PM and there will always be the risk of unexpected events and also incidents that will cause the ball to be dropped. It is how you manage these events that will determine the outcome of your project. Obviously you try your best to avoid being in that position in the first place, but life will always throw you a curve ball, which is why you will always need to be prepared to dust yourself and your team to move forward and be adaptable to the changing situation.



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