Good article about the difference between Engagement Mgmt and Project Mgmt

N2IT

Engagement Management vs. Project Management | Project Management Tips || Project Management, Collaboration and Knowledge Management Blog

It's a bit dated but the principals remain the same.

I have to admit that project delivery is fun, but the larger scope and responsibility that comes along with the engagement manager role interest me a lot more. Not to mention this is the next role I will be taken once the service I am driving stabilizes.

I just thought you all may find this interesting.

Quantumstate

Wat?! Sales doesn't go over the CIO. And I've never seen a job opening for an 'Engagement Manager'.

I have seen jobs for Program Manager and Sr. Program Manager, and in fact two weeks ago I applied for 43 of those openings at Amazon. No word yet; may be that they are overwhelmed. (Or maybe they don't want me)

N2IT

Not that strange you never heard of an engagement manager. Not something you would pick up in the PMBOK or PMP study guide. It's a position that usually encompasses several positions. For instance in our environment we have one particular engagement manager who manages 3 project managers and reports directly to a director level manager. Some of the tasks are that of a conventional program managers, but with additional task. Relationship management and some requirements analysis. You also get into account management and sales a bit more. Always aligning with the business around IT infrastructure/service. It's a challenging role usually taking 60-80 hours of your week, depending on where you are at in the engagement. The key is to never stop and to continually gain business by aligning and providing innovative solutions. Engagement managers run operations and projects usually consecutively depending on what the business needs.

For instance right now I am in the process of revamping a lot of processes on a service desk along with cost and resource modeling. I show my models to senior leadership to get buy in and we can add scope to SOW which mean more business (potentially)

paul78

@Quantumstate - the role and title of Engagement Manager is fairly common in consulting companies. That's where I usually run into that title. If you are curious about those jobs - take a look at these descriptions:

engagement manager jobs at Deloitte
Role: Engagement manager | Careers | McKinsey & Company

Typical salary of an engagement manager:
www.glassdoor.com/salaries/engagement-manager-salary-SRCH_K00,18.htm

The way that I have described engagement management versus program management is that an engagement manager tends to be vertically focused alongside a customer or set of customers and a program manager is aligned horizontally along an internal business strategy or product.

@N2IT - While I agree that engagement management and project management are 2 very distinct roles with complementary charters. I'm not exactly sure that I agree the blog author's assertion that's on the same level as Sales or that it should be organized directly under the CEO as a general practice. Also, the author's description seems more like an account manager or client services.

Depending on the business, I have always preferred to see engagement managers aligned closer to account/relationship managers as a separate professional services team then with sales. Sales may close the deal but until the engagement manager delivers the solution, the revenue usually cannot be fully recognized - that would be the primary responsibility of the engagement manager.

We don't use the title of engagement manager where I work but we have discussed the role and typically it's a Director or VP level role. And we assign persons into that role only if it's a high 7 figure or 8 figure revenue producing customer.

I suspect that the role itself will vary by business. But in my own little mind,I think that the only significant distinction between a program manager and an engagement manager is that former is internally focused where the latter is externally focused.

Quantumstate

Hm, never heard of an 'engagement manager', and I've never seen any jobs advertised. But I'll look more closely now.

Sounds like my old job as Systems Analyst with DEC.

N2IT

Paul nice post!

To your point about sales which I agree. That should be left for another role or team (depending on the size of the organization)

One note I would like to add - There is a major difference between delivered service and managed delivered service. Program management in my experience is usually focused on the service delivery while Engagement managers are focused on managed service delivery. (Big difference)

Paul I have seen Engagement Managers report directly to the COO, never the CEO though.

@Quantum

What task did you deliver while filling the role as a System Analyst? I have never been an System Analyst, but all the Analyst I have worked with were usually highly technical and analyzed and implemented IT solutions and/or captured technical requirements.

Engagement Managers from my vantage point are responsible for service delivery, cost modeling, proposal writing, utilization management, risk assessment, role defintion, and relationship management just to name a few.

Quantumstate

I worked for DEC in the 1980's, assessing and delivering VAXsystems for customers.