Yeah - I recognise that. Pragmatically sometimes you're a cog and you don't get much choice. That said, I think that when we're acting as project managers, it's a critical part of our job to advocate for change for good here (or with more nuance, to understand what the needs are further up the chain as well as ours and our teams and suggest improvements that work better). I think we often have more power than we think here. As a PM you'll frequently have more standing in this space than your team and if you suggest improvements to imposed process that make everyone's lives easier without losing value, then you're often pushing at an open door.
I think this is good advice, but often the project manager doesn't get to choose how they track and report the project - the metrics and quantity of reporting is imposed upon them from a great height!
Yeah - I recognise that. Pragmatically sometimes you're a cog and you don't get much choice. That said, I think that when we're acting as project managers, it's a critical part of our job to advocate for change for good here (or with more nuance, to understand what the needs are further up the chain as well as ours and our teams and suggest improvements that work better). I think we often have more power than we think here. As a PM you'll frequently have more standing in this space than your team and if you suggest improvements to imposed process that make everyone's lives easier without losing value, then you're often pushing at an open door.
I think this is good advice, but often the project manager doesn't get to choose how they track and report the project - the metrics and quantity of reporting is imposed upon them from a great height!