Proactive Versus Reactive Project Managers: Which Approach Works?

Project managers across different organizations have varying styles of managing projects. Proactive project managers are those who can foresee the events to an extent that they have a response plan ready for those situations. Reactive project managers on the other hand wait until the situation has occurred and plan their next course of action based on that. Which one’s better is a debatable question? But based on my personal experience I believe being proactive certainly has its own advantages when it comes to project management.

Let’s walk through a real time example from my personal diaries. I was assigned a new project in my role as a Project Manager. I had to take the project from its inception to completion managing it along its journey. From writing the SOW, to defining requirements, assigning resources, time and budget baselines, identifying risks – all the works had to be done by me. Just like any amateur Project Manager I did the mistake of not being able to proactively identify all the stakeholders, risks and fall back plans.

I did a good job in coming up with a realistic budget, schedule and resource estimates. I also formed the baselines and was ready with my project plan. What did I do wrong? Well, for starters, I did not take the effort of identifying all the critical stakeholders who might or might not influence my project. Further, since I did not have the complete stakeholders list, the requirements were not defined comprehensively. So could you imagine where this project is headed? You might have guessed it right – not being able to include all the requirements was a mistake which resulted into an incorrect final product.

As a proactive project manager I should have identified all the risks that might occur. Since I choose to be reactive due to my inexperience, 2 months into the project, and we hit a wall. Two of our critical resources were not available to work further. And as you thought, I did not have a risk response plan for this event. What did I do? I reacted. I let the risk to take place and then I found myself running around finding solutions. If only I had been proactive and identified a risk response plan for such an event I at-least would have a written course of action to implement in this situation.

Click here to read about some of the daily aspects that I describe for a Project Manager to be involved with.

Just like that, some of the proactive aspects for a project manager includes –

  • Identifying all the stakeholders early on in the project
  • Identifying all the risks and designing their risk response plans even before the project begins
  • Proactively requesting status updates and monitoring critical tasks
  • Proactively visualize critical paths and any hurdles that might need to be overcome
  • Have a Plan A and also a Plan B just in case Plan A fails

These are some of the pointers based on personal experience. I would like to hear back from you what are other factors where a project manager can be or should be proactive?

 

Liked Liked