When your company is embarking on a new project, one of the first decisions is who to appoint to run the program or project. The quickest answer is to assign a current manager to the task, usually the one with the bulk of the activities for the project. Yet, historically, those initiatives that everyone felt were successful always had one key ingredient: a strong, skilled leader. If the project duration is long, will result in a major change to the company, or originated outside of your organization, you should consider appointing a dedicated project manager that can provide structure and expertise.

In some instances, the decision may not be clear cut. If not, you should ask yourself the following questions:

What is the bottom line for all stakeholder expectations?

It is critical to learn why the business wants the project completed, especially if you were not directly involved when the project was formulated and approved, as was my experience with the particular project that I will use as an example. Speak directly with all of the stakeholders, specifically the business sponsors, before deciding whether to bring on a project manager. Your own team will have their perspective, but it may not include the key reasons.

In my case, meeting with the other stakeholders was invaluable. They were able to clearly explain to me that the current situation was contributing to negative customer service that would continue daily until the completion of the project. They were also clear about what they needed, expected and believed the IT department (and my operations manager) had already committed to deliver. The stakeholders wanted the application fixed before the start of winter, because bad weather meant an increase in the number of customer trouble complaints. When the complaints reached a certain volume, the application came to a virtual standstill. The business would then have to move to “manual” operation. By meeting with the stakeholders I was able to see a more complete picture, not just my manager’s perspective on the project.

Has your manager identified and assessed all major milestones, cross-functional impacts and risks?

After identifying the stakeholder expectations, I immediately set out to determine how the manager arrived at a proposed three-month completion date. Did his project plan address the cross-functional risks? Was it realistic and well thought through?

Your challenge is to quickly ascertain whether the manager has identified all tasks, impacts and risks across multiple departments and outside vendors. Meet face to face with your manager. Doing this enables you to listen to the facts while also observing the manager’s confidence in the project plan.

Having the manager demonstrate how he came up with his time frame for completion was the quickest, most tangible way to assess whether his project plan was attainable. Twenty minutes into our meeting I discovered that key factors which would influence time frames had not been verified. Certainly as a good manager he knew what they were, but he and his team had guessed on many timeframes. This meant that the team had no idea how long this project would take to complete. Substantially missing the expected completion date on a project hurts professional credibility—both the project sponsors’ and the responsible manager’s. It became clear to both the manager and me that a dedicated project manager was needed. This person would have the singular time and focus to flush out all of the activities and their interdependencies.

Typically the only business measure of a project’s success is whether it met the original stakeholders expectations within the constraints of the business case. In this instance, I am happy to say it did. A good project manager can not only fix problems like the ones I’ve listed, but they can usually prevent them before a single dollar is spent.