In a past company I worked in a department that does not traditionally have project management. When I joined the department it was just crossing the chasm from one off to repeatable. Working with the existing team I helped map out the entire end to end process. We came up with a RASCI chart of over 1800 distinct line items in the release process, with the PM being involved in over 90% of those. We boiled this down into a phase by phase process document, with about 200 core task areas that the Project Manager was directly responsible for.

Now this was great and detailed. Just showing people the RASCI would cause jaw drops.

As an added bonus, fast forward a some time and some politic shifts later, our department was cut during a major restructuring. Functional Managers had argued they could do the job in addition to their normal job.

Now they had our very detailed process document. They had step by step instructions on what do do, right? It should have been easy, right? With in a month of our department being cut, they were underwater trying to figure out how to do all the work we did, even with the process doc.

Did you ever see the movie "50 First Dates" ?

Watch it and you'll see that Adam Sandler was the quintessential Project Manager.

This might sound odd, but watch 2 episodes of Grand Designs. One episode where the person building their home manages the project themselves, the other where they get in a project manager.

The Presenter Kevin McLeod always questions the sanity of not having a project manager.

That is the anecdote for me, always question the sanity of not having a professional project manager.

I was asked to create a new method of tracking credit card portfolios and I insisted on documenting the specs and meeting with the sponsors. Suddenly in the advisory meeting it was uncovered that there were 2 different approaches wanted, not one. Priorities were set and both were designed into this new software.

Later, after delivering the product I was asked by upper management how long would it take to create documentation for it. I said "give me 10 minutes and I can have an online system tied into the product". Everyone on my team agreed with my estimate because all the documentation already existed. Management was shocked and pleased by this.

Eventually three different departments were fighting over who would own the new software. Other software development teams were telling me "I don't know how you did this given the lack of time and resources". My answer was that I was following the PMI methodology and refused to rush development because the software specs were too vague and the clients were unsure of their needs. Management agreed on the timelines when they saw that a top notch product was being developed very quickly.

Project management ensures a high likelyhood of successfully ending with a quality product. The age of "rolling the dice" by jumping into software development without a sound project methodology is over.