What should be the role of project manager's in turbulent times ?

Tackle the causes of turbulence by prioritizing

The causes of turbulence can be

An Excessive employee turnout.

Turn out of skilled artisans causing the delay of the project progress.

Increase in the price of the resources materials due to unforeseen changes in Government Policies,

Suppliers demanding to increase the unit prices of the materials,

Accident at site causing lightening Strike.

The causes of turbulence are to be dealt in systematic manner.

Meetings of client, stakeholders and suppliers depending on the need of the time, individually or severally, to appraise the problem,

Appraise the head office to discuss the measures,

And Organize In-house Staff meetings to discuss and assign the responsibilities and scheme for the crisis

Ultimately Project Manager should ensure a concerted team effort to handle the crisis effectively.

Thus a Project manager should play the roles of Interpersonal, Informational and Decisional role to come out of the turbulent times.

First of all the project manager should see the Scoping And Requirements of the project. He should trim the extras and stay focused.He should plan with “Shrinking Team Effect” in mind and should schedule for uncertainties and the critical chain management. He should understand the real meaning of multi-tasking and planning accordingly and plan for cost cutting – Tips on doing exactly that.

At the time of execution,he should build high performance project teams, if necessary, he should give coaching and mentoring (instead of supervision) and lead the virtual teams by communication and leadership, weeding out bias and intolerance, cultural orientation and managing the change. He should truly follow the 80/20 principle and calling the shots

Economic turbulence means there is shortage of money.  Cut frills out of the project, Classify features and frills on basis of

Good to have, not necessary, not required.  PMs need to keep tight control on developers who add R&D keeda-giri in GUI area, that takes effort and diverts energies putting pressure on your critical paths to be managed. TIGHTLY SECURE AND MANAGE YOUR CRITICAL PATHs.  Use as much as MS Project or such to ensure your critical paths are managed, as many PMs prefer using Excel due to its calculation features, but Excel is limited when it comes to resource utilization, how many guys are going to be out of work, how are overassigned, critical path measures, managing events and milestones etc.

Ensure RIsk management, Critical Paths of projects are well managed so u dont go out of time. If large number of people and diverse skills are required, identify the big ones and the mosquitos. Assign people to swat the mosquitos and move those   people out of the teams once u are sure they are no longer required. Risk Mitigation exercise:  Stakeholder guarantees that resource is available as and when these mosquitos dont work.

Ensure un-necessary costs are immediately identified:  No late evenings unless expressly assigned, no overtime or late sitting charges will be paid by company unless a senior VP assigns the same, people who sit till an hour after office leaving time put of A/cs, lights, fans, servers, machines, etc.

Project environments are in well lit areas, energy saving lamps installed that dim or go off if no activity in a particular area.

Keep an eye out for huddle situations when in the middle of the day you suddenly find 15 people sitting and solving some problem or watching something in an area for over 1 hour. If it is a technical hitch or something, use   your judgement, and check out how that thing could be done in alternative way. Techies love "challenges" instead of find work arounds, and these "challenge solving" environments can quickly become a crisis when the D-day is nigh.

In my view, a project manager should always identify the projects that needs attention and should always see which projects have slowed down or haven't had much work put into them. He should help the client & see that the task is performed to the fullest of the efficiency and to plan out an organizational structure to bring out ease and flow in the task. He should also make optimal utilization of resources for the purpose of production and must has keep preparing status reports and presenting them to higher managing authorities for scrutinizing.

He should give utmost importance to the client & treat him in such a fashion that the client is happy at the end of the day......

First of all project managers, should learn to understand everything about Project Management practices to be used in this slow down.

• Should take the responsibilites.
• Should be initiative to solve the problems facing.
• Should be Optimistic.
• Should focus on saving the project  from the triple constraints of Time, Cost And Scope while maintaining the quality. 
• Should have good planning, control and execution in turbulent times.

Work closely with the stake holders to minimize surprises & risks