If you were building a house, would you want to hire a general contractor/PM who had spent their career managing health care projects? While everyone knows that you must pour the foundation before building the walls, would you expect your project manager to know that you must do the rough plumbing before the rough electrical and why? And how to resolve if mistakes are made? Should they know the impact to the schedule if custom cabinets are chosen versus pre-made? You cannot simply rely on the knowledge of the subcontractors as they are focused solely on getting their work done. The PM needs to understand the big picture. The same is true in the investment management field. The more the PM knows about the industry, the more experience they have had addressing and resolving challenges, and the more effective they can be on your project.
Market conditions only intensify the need for project managers with a deep understanding of the buy-side business. While some project managers have been able to "get by" without in-depth industry experience, the intense pressures being placed on business managers to grow their business lines are putting new constraints on their time. Business line managers and subject matter experts are focused on running the business and supporting the modification of current products as well as the launch of new products – thus, their time cannot be spent educating PMs and their teams on the aspects of their business. In addition, tight deadlines, complex products, and regulations limit their ability to provide "on-the-job" training or undertake substantial project advisory roles. They must rely on industry-savvy teams to understand the investment management landscape, get the job done, and effectively communicate to all levels of the organization.
The industry-savvy PM delivers additional, critical benefits, beyond those provided by an equally sound project management “technician” with no industry expertise. Using the backdrop of a complex investment systems project, in which a large investment manager is implementing a new portfolio accounting platform and equity order management system (OMS), I can share a few examples of the importance of aligning industry expertise with the fundamental elements of sound project management. In the area of Stakeholder Management / Communication, an industry-savvy PM has a keen appreciation of the need to tailor communication and interaction by stakeholder/audience type (e.g., avoid interaction with Traders at market open/close, keep communications succinct and targeted with Portfolio Managers, etc.). This allows the PM to act as a true advisor vs. requiring superfluous “education and training” of fundamental organization attributes. To manage Scope/Approach, the PM needs the ability to leverage proven industry-specific approaches to plan and execute key project elements, such as data conversion (e.g., approach to maintaining and converting transaction history and historical performance returns). The knowledge and experience with these typical approaches reduces the time spent performing options analysis, reduces the risk of missed scope elements and decreases overall delivery time.
I think you get the idea. I have seen too many times where an organization decides to give a less experienced PM a try, only to discover they have to bring in an industry experienced PM later on, losing time and money in the process leading to delayed or cancelled projects. John Wooden's famous quote captures it well: "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"
Bottom line – investment management firms are expected to do more with less to achieve business goals and show tangible benefits as quickly as possible; and utilizing industry-knowledgeable Project Managers will be critical to their success.
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