Back in the days when you were allowed in the cockpit of a passenger airliner to meet the pilots; there used to be a well used gag where one pilot would explain his job was to fly the aircraft at take-off and it was his colleagues job to land the aircraft. At that point his co-pilot would turn to him and say "But I'm a take-off pilot too, not a landing pilot!" "What! Then who's going to land it then!?"
This analogy has got good mileage in our project environment in recent weeks, as we grapple with project resourcing. I hold a supernumary role as the LAN WAN Technical Project Group (TPG) Lead. One of my responibilities is to maintain a list of LAN WAN 'Practitioners' who could be deployed on high value projects.
Where our previous Networks project management group managed to achieve good results was to cast aside the heuristic that a PM really needs to be assigned through out the lifecycle of a project. We found that we were better able to target high-value skills by assigning senior resources as "Take-off Pilots", establishing the beachhead on an account, undertaking the scoping and estimating phase of the project/programme and getting the package of work into a recognisable form. Once this was established, then their role might evolve to being the Programme Manager of the work or they could be lifted out and replaced with a more junior resource that could deliver the project once the rudimentary framework was in place (aka the "Landing Pilot").
Having been the Take-Off Pilot PM/Programme Manager more than once myself, I found this an exciting way to work, as often the biggest hurdles were faced in the initial stages of the project and once things were in a Steady State, well, it got a bit boring to be honest. There is also an opportunity to retain this senior resource in a Governance role as the project continues through the lifecycle; so they retain close contact with the incumbent PM and any big issues which crop up.
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