This concept was conceived while I was mowing my lawn. Mowing provides a time to think. Mostly I think about how I don't like mowing my lawn, but today I thought about project management.

First let me say I'm talking about project management as a function, not about any of the talented Project Managers I work with now or worked with in the past. And I'm talking about project mangement as a separate function on a project. Yes every project needs "managed" in the sense that every project has to be defined, milestones along the way have to be planned and something has to be delivered.

The question I'm considering is when is it appropriate to separate out the PM function and have it handled by a specific person otherwise uninvolved in the project. The following chart summarizes my thinking

"Person Days" is the number of people on a project times the number of days a project is open. The chart shows that the fewer days a project is open or people working on it, separating the project management function has negative marginal value. In other words, it hurts the project.

Now if this were an economics class with Dr. G. Dirk Mateer I would be done with my essay and out the door, but I'll ellaborate a bit more. This is going to seem like I'm going far afield but stick with me.

I volunteer at the ELCA Youth Gathering. One part of the gathering is staffed by volunteers who work in one of the dozens of hotels where participants are housed during the event. For a time, each hotel had a three person team with specific titles: Hotel Pastor, Crisis Counselor and Youth. That model has been done away with for a number of reasons, but one was the fact that Crisis Counselors created crisises.

When you give someone a job they do it. When you tell someone to manage the project they do, even when the project doesn't need external management.

You can see that there are no numbers on either axis. My thought on the X-axis is that somewhere around 150 person days (five people working for a month) is where the red line turns into the positive. That's more than five people working on a project that is open for more than a month.

Anything less than that and project management shouldn't be separated out, but can be done by the team working on the project. This comes from my seven years of experience working on projects in an agency environment.

What is your experience? Am I wrong? Is the X-intercept too far out? Too close? Let me know in the comments.