The thing to understand about project managers is that they are not romantics. They will clutch at anything (a half-decent spreadsheet, a clear dashboard, even a scribbled note) if it genuinely makes the labor of delivery lighter.

If they are not swooning over your gleaming, multimillion-dollar enterprise “PM” tool, it is not because they are Luddites. It is because the contraption does not serve them. This is not resistance to change. It is resistance to a Trojan Horse.

Whose Tool Is It, Really?

If project managers did not ask for it, then they were never its intended beneficiaries.

Follow the pipelines of data and the victors quickly reveal themselves: Finance, Compliance, Audit, Controlling. These are the true clients. For them, the new system is a godsend; no more clunky macros, no more bloated spreadsheets. Their reports are clean, their dashboards luminous, their enthusiasm unmistakable. But this is not empowerment for project managers. It is conscription. They are reduced to data clerks, feeding the machine for someone else’s benefit.

Newton’s Revenge

Newton’s third law applies: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The work did not vanish; it merely shifted. Where once project managers orchestrated delivery, now they spend their days curating data in a system with all the charm of an administrative console and all the humility of a Panopticon. Michel Foucault, writing on the disciplinary society, noted that surveillance was never neutral; it was a technique of control. The enterprise PM tool is no different: a digital tower from which others can gaze, while the project managers labor visibly below.

The time and focus that ought to be spent planning the future is instead squandered maintaining the past. Call it “digital transformation” if you must. They call it clerical servitude.

Consequences in the Wild

What follows is entirely predictable, and faintly comic:

• • Shadow systems. Project managers retreat to Excel and Word. The official tool becomes a Potemkin village, while the real plan lives elsewhere.

  • Past vs. future bias. Finance adores Actuals, and so the tool obsesses over them. But project management is about Forecasts. A tool that underweights them is like a ship with an anchor but no rudder: technically afloat, but going nowhere useful.

  • The illusion of control. Executives gaze at their dashboards, mistaking visibility for mastery. Meanwhile, project managers mutter, “If only you knew…”

The Harder Truth

Enterprise PM tools can, in theory, help project managers. But only when chosen by them, and designed with their priorities in mind. Otherwise, the price is measured in squandered hours, fractured focus, and the slow suffocation of delivery. So before congratulating yourself, ask the only questions that matter:

• • Does the tool strengthen planning and forecasting, or merely prettify past data?

  • Does it empower delivery, or only comfort others (e.g., Finance)?

The Last Word

Let’s be brutally honest about the machine you’ve wheeled into the room. It is not a chisel in the craftsperson’s hand; it is a watchtower on the shop floor. It is visibility weaponized, a comfort blanket for other departments that force project managers into unpaid clerical service.

Tools that serve delivery earn affection. Tools that serve the hierarchy demand obedience. Choose which you want and stop pretending you can have both.