Whenever I tell people I’m a project manager, there’s a very specific moment I’ve learned to recognise. It’s subtle. A slight pause. A polite nod. And then… nothing behind the eyes.
I have worked with people who bluntly said they hated having me around, mostly in the iGaming crowd. This could have been done by just an email, I don’t need a project manager, I just need someone to get this done, I don’t need someone to tell me what to do…
All the things I’ve heard people tell me… and all the things I’ve probably said about project managers at one point or another…
Let’s be honest about why people hate project managers
Nobody hates delivery. Nobody hates getting things done. What people hate is everything that pretends to help delivery but somehow makes it worse.
Weekly status updates that change nothing. Meetings that exist purely to justify their own existence. Beautiful project plans that collapse the moment reality shows up. Status reports that stay green right up until the day everything explodes.
I’ve worked as a Scrum Master, Product Owner, interim project manager, contract project manager, fractional project manager, you name it. Different industries, including iGaming, regulatory programmes, product launches, and data and AI implementations. And in almost every single place, someone has taken me aside and said, with real feeling: “The last project manager nearly killed this project.” They’re rarely exaggerating.
A true story about a 147-slide PowerPoint Project Plan
Early in my career, I inherited a project plan in a PowerPoint that had 147 slides. One hundred and forty-seven. It was colour-coded. Dependencies mapped down to the hour. It looked like something you’d present to NASA before launching a rocket. There was just one small issue. Nobody believed in it. Not the team. Not the suppliers. Not even, I suspect, the person who created it.
The plan didn’t fail because it wasn’t detailed enough. It failed because it was trying to control a reality that had already moved on. That’s when I realised something important. If your project plan requires belief, like actual faith, it’s already in trouble.
Teams aren’t the problem
One project still sticks with me. I was brought in as an interim project manager halfway through a digital programme that was already behind schedule. Classic situation. Everyone busy. Nothing landing. Leadership concerned. Morale… let’s call it fragile.
Within the first week, someone said to me: “We don’t need more process. We need decisions.” Fair. And they were right.
The problem wasn’t a lack of updates, or tools, or Agile ceremonies, or Kanban boards, or whatever framework you want to name. I’ve used all of them, PMP, Waterfall, Scrum, Agile, they all have their place. The real issue was that nobody was holding the whole picture long enough to make trade-offs visible. Everyone was doing their part. Engineering was building. Product was prioritising. Compliance was reviewing. Suppliers were delivering pieces. But no one was connecting it all together.
Small businesses do not want a project manager
If you run a small business, the phrase “project manager for small business” probably sounds faintly offensive. You’re already the sponsor, the delivery lead, the escalation point, and occasionally the person fixing the printer. The idea of adding someone whose job appears to be asking questions you already know the answers to is… not appealing.
I’ve seen this first-hand in a start-up I worked with. The leadership team actively resisted having any kind of project management role. It felt unnecessary. Too corporate. Too slow. Three years later, they had grown fast. Teams had multiplied. Priorities were everywhere. And everything felt just slightly out of control.
Not because they weren’t capable. Because no one was coordinating the whole band. That’s usually the turning point. Not when things fail, but when they become too big to hold in one person’s head.
Project management isn’t the problem
When people say they hate project managers, what they usually mean is they hate being managed around rather than helped through. There’s a big difference. Bad project management adds noise. More updates. More meetings. More structure than the work actually needs. Good delivery support does the opposite. It makes things quieter.
When I’m working in a fractional or contract role, my job isn’t to introduce ceremony. It’s to remove friction. That often means doing things nobody really notices. Chasing the dependency no one owns. Surfacing the awkward risk before it becomes a political problem. Saying no to work that technically fits but will break everything else. None of that looks impressive in a methodology diagram. But it’s usually what keeps a project moving.
A question I ask (and people don’t always like it)
Sometimes I ask this to a client in early conversations: “If I disappeared tomorrow, would this project slow down, speed up, or carry on exactly the same?” It’s a slightly uncomfortable question.
If the answer is “speed up”, then yes, you’ve probably had a bad experience with project managers.
If the answer is “slow down”, then delivery support is doing what it’s supposed to do.
In my experience, most people who “hate project managers” have just never worked with one who made things easier instead of heavier.
Contract and fractional project managers exist because…
Most organisations don’t need a permanent project manager sitting there all year. What they need is someone to step in when things start drifting. To steady the work. To reconnect the moving parts. To make delivery feel possible again. That’s why roles like contract project manager, interim project manager, and fractional project manager exist.
I’ve seen this across iGaming product launches, regulatory compliance programmes, and data and AI implementations. The pattern is always the same. The work becomes more complex than the current structure can handle. At that point, you either add support, or you carry the load yourself.
So… do you actually hate project managers?
Probably not. You hate wasted time. You hate unnecessary complexity. You hate delivery theatre where everything looks organised but nothing actually moves. That’s fair.
If you’re dealing with a project that feels heavier than it should, or one that’s quietly drifting, it might be worth talking to someone who focuses on making delivery simpler, not louder. Worst case, you confirm your suspicion that project managers are still annoying.
Best case, things start moving again without you having to carry it all yourself.