When the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids of Giza, they had project managers keeping the blocks of sandstone moving into place, says Robert Massoud, a lecturer in Bryant’s Management department.
“There were literally thousands of people who performed the tasks required to build those incredible structures, and there were overseers who didn’t do any of the ‘heavy lifting’ but made sure the work was being done,” he says. “That was project management.”
Despite a history stretching into antiquity, however, project management didn’t become a distinct and defined business profession until the 1960s. Today, the Project Management Institute, the industry trade organization, has hundreds of thousands of members globally. Additionally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there will be a six to seven percent increase in the need for project managers over the next decade, which is above average for business professions.
“Normally, there’s fairly stable increase in the need for project managers,” says Massoud, with the only recent deviation from the trend coming during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s good news for students at Bryant, which is one of a handful of schools in the Northeast offering Team and Project Management as a major.
“We’ve placed several students right after graduation into construction project management roles,” Massoud notes, adding that the oversight and people-centric nature of project management makes the profession an unlikely candidate to be threatened by AI.
Understanding and acceptance may vary
Massoud divides corporate acceptance of project management into three levels:
- Companies that formally recognize project manager as a title;
- those that have people doing project management work without the title, but recognize the value of the discipline called project management; and
- those that don’t realize that project management is being done, but benefit from the project work that people are doing.
“I can say with total confidence that every company, no matter the size, industry, product, or service, is running projects,” says Massoud. As a result, he foresees “plenty of opportunities to instill project management as a discipline in companies that don’t have a formal system in place.”
‘Communicate, empower, support.’
Part of the challenge of enlightening employers is to define what project management is — and what it isn’t — says Massoud.
“Project managers do not do the tasks that a project requires to be completed,” he emphasizes. “They don’t hammer nails into walls; they don’t write or test code; they don’t take on the work when a team member calls in sick. Their main role can be summarized in three words: communicate, empower, and support.”
“Project managers do not do the tasks that a project requires to be completed. They don’t hammer nails into walls; they don’t write or test code; they don’t take on the work when a team member calls in sick. Their main role can be summarized in three words: communicate, empower, and support.”
Communication is the most important of these, he adds.
“Every minute of every day, someone needs to know something about the project, and the project manager’s job is to make sure everyone knows what they need to know, when they need to know it,” says Massoud.
Training, mentoring, and cheerleading are also part of project management.
“It is truly a people manager job,” he says.
Companies that compel project managers to get “hands on” risk project failure, Massoud stresses.
“I liken this to a camp counselor who’s watching 10 children at a summer camp,” he says. “If that counselor focuses on a particular child, the other nine will immediately scatter, and the counselor will lose control over the group.”
Learning by doing
The job of a project manager may not be hands-on, but learning to be a project manager is.
“On day one of my class, I ask students how many of them have experience with project management, and most students assume I mean ‘formal’ experience in a work environment, so they say ‘none,’” says Massoud, who goes on to explain that everyone runs projects nearly every day of their life.
“Getting dressed in the morning is a simple yet accurate example of a project: you perform tasks to accomplish something, and those tasks are based on goals you establish,” he says. “I teach students how to run projects that are more complicated than getting dressed, but the concepts are basically the same.”
“I teach students how to run projects that are more complicated than getting dressed, but the concepts are basically the same.”
Project management courses are “the epitome of experiential education,” he emphasizes: “Many of my students are leaders of student organizations or are involved in part-time jobs or internships, and they learn skills that they can apply immediately.” Students also serve as project managers of Bryant’s annual Project Playhouse, coordinating and supervising the design, construction, and delivery of custom-built playhouses for children with life-threatening illnesses.
The benefits of learning project management are not just limited to students who pursue it as a major, Massoud points out.
“Many students who graduate with other majors end up working as project managers in companies that they applied to using their major as the entry point,” he says. “More companies recognize the value that project management has, and when they see that their new hire brings not only expertise in their particular major but also the skills of project management, they become even more valuable to the company.”