Getting along with your (vendor-side) Project Manager

Have you ever called time-out in the middle of a project and asked for a different project manager?

You should consider this your inalienable right as a customer.

Vendor-side project managers are, of course, people too, subject to the same grinding, erosive workplace influences that all of us are. Probably more, really, because they serve so many masters and spend a lot of their time currying favor with QA staff, translators, editors, desktop publishers and their own managers, not to mention multiple customers at a time. So if they are grumpy on the phone or unresponsive or slip deadlines occasionally - the key word is "occasionally" - it's just part of life.

Sometimes, though, the chemistry is just not right. You're the manager on your side and they're your primary point of contact, and these are gears that need to mesh smoothly. How long do you want to work with somebody you don't enjoy working with?

• The first necessity is to meet the person who will be your project manager before you award the project to the vendor. A face-to-face meeting is preferable, but if phone is the best you can do, that's better than nothing. No sensible vendor would decline your request for this.
• Once the project is underway, teach your project manager how you want to be treated. Do you want to exchange cell phone numbers or even home phone numbers? Do you want to set up IM or Skype? Do you want weekly reports? On which day? What information do you want in them? Do you prefer to handle as much as possible via e-mail, with phone calls only when necessary? Do you want regular project status calls? The manager, to some extent, is in business to make you happy, and teaching him/her how you want to be treated as a client is a small investment in what could become a long-term relationship.
• Gauge the project manager's competence. Beyond an introductory training session on your product, if you're holding the manager's hand a lot, that represents time and work you shouldn't have to expend. Is the manager a localization newbie? Some newbies are lower-maintenance than others, and if you have to take one, that's the kind you want.
• Most of all, is the project manager delivering on promises? Any manager has a lot of upstream influences and a change in any one of them could blow a delivery to you, but if it happens repeatedly, then you have the wrong person running your project.
• Finally, what kind of end-of-project etiquette does the manager exhibit? Is there a post-partum meeting to review how the project went? Do you just get an invoice and no handshake? Does it appear that the manager has the business sense to cultivate the relationship with you for future projects (assuming you haven't been a bear to work with)?

If you're losing sleep over issues like this, you need to call the account manager and suggest a change of project manager. It's up to you whether you want to cite chapter and verse on why it's not working out, but a simple "I need a different project manager because this one is not working out for me" will do. Any clear-thinking account manager with future commissions breathing down his neck will happily accommodate you.