Being successful as a project manager in the area you are not familiar of

Good day...

I believe the above subject is applicable to most of you as you might have the experience being assigned to a project that you are far from being an expert in the particular domain or knowledge. A good example that I have in this topic is when I was first assigned to implement an organization-wide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which covered en d-to-end business processes of the organization. With lack of background in Accounting, I found that it was overly challenging to configure the system for an industry-standard accounting postings and financial reporting.

I considered myself very fortunate that at that time my Finance Director, who was entering retirement age, provided me with the guidance and direction I needed to go through the most challenging stage of the project.

It is true that in this type of situation, a helping hand from someone with better expertise in the domain, is something you will treasure. The question is, how you deal with this situation as a project manager. Relying on your team members being expert in the domain might not be always the best case, as there are occassions when your team members take benefit of your weakness. While gaining the necessary expertise might takes time, which your project timeline does not necessarily allow.

In my experience, it is best to gain some insight of the domain you are not familiar with. Finding a good source in internet, interviewing your friends and colleagues who possess better knowledge, reading books of the related topic, could equip you with the necessary knowledge. After you gain the necessary insight, although it is limited, you can delve further by leveraging the knowledge of your team members in parallel with leading the project delivery.

While continuing with project delivery, you can gradually familiarize your self with the knowledge domain through meetings, discussions, and workshops.

While I am not a strong supporter of leading a project in the area that you have zero or very minimum familiarity of, I am neither a proponent to limiting yourself to deliver only the projects you are expert in. For me, new things can be learnt as long as you have the passion and opportunity to.

Edwin

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