The other day, I was challenged by a client to provide a description of why they still needed a PM at the end of their project. To understand their question, and my response, you need a bit of background information first.

This software development and package integration project had been running for several months, had completed the installation, custom development, and integration testing. Nearly all of the project team had been released from the project: only the lead programmer and a part time solution architect remained to deal with any issues arising during user acceptance testing (UAT), to answer questions from the client’s technical team who would be supporting the solution after the end of the project, and to provide some knowledge transfer to the client’s team on how to use the custom software solution. With such a small team (1.5 FTEs), low risk for failure, and only a few items left to complete with adequate hours remaining in the budget to complete them, the project was in a very enviable position.

The problem was that the schedule had been extended and, while there had been additional hours added for programmers to develop and test new functionality for the custom application, additional project management hours were not added with each change authorization signed between the two parties. Instead, with only a couple of project management hours left in the contract, I was negotiating with my client to have additional project management hours added in another change authorization.

Read the rest at Project Times.