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This week in pm-clinic: turning the tide

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I have just joined as a Project Manager at a software house employing 130 people, 90 of which are involved in software. The engineers are talented but number of PMs is low and failed projects is high. CEO is technical, but sees PM is a discipline he has neglected for too long. Hence the board have hired myself and one other PM to help.

Many engineers are anti-management and believe they don’t need managing, but after 3 weeks I see major problems of out of control work, lost budgets and late schedules. Some engineers fear I’ve been hired to cut headcount and are anxious (though I anticipate that the opposite may be true).

My preliminary moves to add structure to projects has met great resistance: some engineers refused to attend a weekly team meeting.

How can I bring order to the chaos without resorting to the stick method? How can I get engineers to buy in to the Project Management ethos? I already feel I’ve alienated some by my job title, and I don’t want to do more damage.