Programme & project support

Interim IT project manager: temporary leadership for your project or programme

Your project manager has left, is off sick, or was never properly appointed. The work carries on regardless: suppliers waiting on answers, a delivery date that will not move with you, a steering group meeting again next month. You need someone now, not in three months once recruitment has landed.

Interim project and programme management is not seat-filling. It is taking over the running of an engagement that will not pause: establishing what is genuinely finished, putting decisions back where they belong, and leaving it in a state your own people can pick up. An interim who cannot leave has failed.

When an interim fits, and when a permanent hire does

The difference is not in the person; it is in the shape of the work.

Your project manager has gone, through departure or illness, and the work cannot wait months for recruitment to conclude.
A project has started without anyone formally in charge of it. It runs on goodwill and on your supplier's calendar.
The work is temporary by nature: one programme, one migration, one year. That does not warrant a permanent post.
It is stuck between two departments, or between you and a supplier, and nobody inside the organisation can cut that knot without being a party to it.
Your own candidate is growing into the role but needs another year. They should be taking it over afterwards, not clearing it up.

What the role covers

An interim engagement does not begin with a plan of approach. It begins with establishing what is actually there. Steering comes after that.

The first fortnight: read the file, speak to everyone involved, and establish what is finished rather than what has been reported. That produces a re-based schedule and a risk list with nothing left off it.
Setting the mandate precisely: which decisions I take myself, which go to the steering group, and up to what value I can approve additional work.
Steering on substance: holding the scope, making dependencies visible, testing change requests for necessity before they become an invoice.
Supplier management: bringing commitments back to what the contract actually says, and fixing acceptance criteria in advance rather than arguing them at delivery.
A fixed rhythm: a short weekly check-in with the team, and a steering-group paper each cycle that reads in ten minutes. I speak to the people involved before a decision reaches the agenda.
The handover, from day one: who takes this on, what they need to know, and what has to be written down for that to work.

What you are left with

Not a folder of documents, but an engagement that can continue without me. I record what has to be recorded, and nothing beyond it.

A re-based schedule and scope that stand on something: what is finished, what remains, which assumptions sit underneath.
A maintained decision log and risk log, and steering-group papers in a fixed format, so the reporting carries on unchanged after I go.
Where supplier commitments are loose: a written record of what now applies and who signs for what.
A handover pack and a successor brought up to speed, taking the role over rather than reinventing it.

What it is not

Not a temporary line-management post. I run a project or a programme; accountability for your department stays with you.
Not seat-filling. Without a mandate the role is a letterbox: everything still goes via somebody else and the delay grows. I would rather say so up front than in month three.
Not reorganisation by the back door. I bring structure to the engagement, not to your org chart.
Not staffing a whole project organisation. This is one person in one role.
Not a standing dependency. An interim who has become indispensable after a year has not finished the job.

Common questions

When is an interim better than hiring someone permanently?

When the work is temporary, and when it is urgent. A programme or a migration has a beginning and an end; that does not justify a permanent post you then have to keep filled. And recruitment takes months during which the work carries on regardless. If the need genuinely is structural, the honest answer is to run the role temporarily while bringing your own candidate up to speed.

What authority does the role need in order to work?

Three things, agreed up front: adjusting schedule and scope within agreed limits, making commitments to suppliers on your behalf, and approving additional work up to an agreed value. Without them, decisions sit unmade and nothing changes about the cause of the delay. If the mandate is withdrawn part-way through, I raise it in the steering group; if it does not come back, continuing is not in your interest and I will say so.

How many days a week, and how long does an engagement run?

To steer a live engagement I count on two to four days a week; below that, decision-making stalls for half of every week. Duration follows the work itself: to a delivery point, to the end of a phase, or until your successor takes over. The shape is time-and-materials with an agreed weekly pattern, or a fixed price for a bounded result. What moves the figure: size, number of suppliers, days per week and travel distance. I name a rate in the first conversation.

Do you work to PRINCE2, agile, or our own method?

I fit what is already in place. If it runs on sprints and a backlog, I steer on that; if there is a steering group with phase documents, I produce those. Switching an engagement to a different way of working half-way through costs more than it returns. Two things I do regardless: record who takes which decision, and measure on what is genuinely finished rather than on an estimated percentage.

How do I know you will actually leave?

Because the exit sits in the engagement from the outset. The proposal states what the end point is and who takes it on; if that person does not exist yet, finding and inducting them is part of the work. In the closing weeks I sit alongside while your successor steers, not the other way round. That is how you find out whether the handover really holds.

More within this service

A project with nobody at the helm?

An introductory conversation is without obligation. Sketch what is at stake and when it has to start; I will say honestly whether interim leadership helps you, or whether something else would serve you better.

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