Do Women Make Better Project Managers?

Are women better than men?

Plenty of people have questioned whether women perform as good as men in the workplace. Women have made in-roads into virtually every profession from Astronaut to Zoologist and show no signs of slowing down. As a manager of project managers, I absolutely have an opinion as to whether women are better at the PM role than men are. I have managed PM teams with 20 plus project managers with both men and women serving in the role. Anecdotaly I would say that the female project managers performed better than their male peers. What I found is that they were more likely to execute in accordance with organizational PM practices and deliver on time and on budget. In my opinion, because they paid attention to the details, their projects performed better. In fact, one of the best PM's I know, worked for me at Motorola and is a woman. (Shout out to Deb Wineland) However, I wanted to poke around to see what research has been done in this area and what empirical, scholarly research has revealed.

Recent research conducted by PMPerspectives.org focused on this topic. They found that there is some credence to what many managers have already figured out. In a study reviewing the impact of gender on project performance, researchers found that female PM's significantly outperform their male peers in several areas. Primarily in their ability to deliver projects on time, on budget, and on scope. Male counterparts were more likely deliver projects that went beyond the scope of the original agreement. There are clearly times when this is valuable, desireable, and necessary. The team of project management researchers offer some advice for taking advantage of the difference between male and female project managers.

If you are looking for better all-round project performance against budget, schedule and scope, then appointing an experienced female project manager increases the probability of a good or better outcome.

If minimizing variance against budget and/or schedule is important, then appointing an experienced female increases the probability of achieving this goal.

If maximizing business benefits is more important than considerations of budget and schedule, then appointing an experienced male increases the probability that you will achieve more than was asked for.

Source: PMPerspectives.org (Please visit this site if you would like to see their article)

Conclusion

While this may be a delicate topic for some, research has shown that there are in fact advantages to having females running your projects. I don't believe however, that this is a "one size fits all" model that can be applied to every situation. In short, everyone deserves a chance and women are just as capable (in some instance more capable) than men in delivering the project on time on budget and within scope.
Have you had an opportunity to work with both men and women as project managers? What has been your experience? Do you believe that women make better project managers? If so, why or why not? Let us know what you think!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010