Question: I'm about to enter a role as project manager. I have attended a lot of projects with quite a span of aspects, constraints, contents, parties and whatever and also had some technical leadership tasks but this time it would be the very first time to receive the label "project manager".

While I'm thinking about it (I have some weeks/months left, it'll be mainly about software and electronics) I oscillate between "this is incredibly difficult, I wasn't aware of that.." and "this is so trivial, what's the deal?".

Actually, the project constraints (time, budget..) have to be met by everyone, so what is the real task despite of having a kickoff meeting, distributing tasks and occasional meetings about the status?

What I especially wonder about are the followings:

* How do I "make" others do their work? I mean it's ultimately their job but when someone is slow, maybe due to reasons like it's more difficult than expected or whatever, what could a project manager do then?
* Projects always have some kind of uncertainty and in my opinion it is nearly impossible to check all possible risks and minimize them. I'm especially thinking about some projects in the past which involved chemical experiments (which were quite a hazzle and turned from 2-3 months to 12-18 months..) and also mechanical engineering where single pieces also took way longer due to occupied machines, limitd materials and so on. You can hardly make an external workshop work faster when it's simply not possible and replacing one with another will quite a while to discuss and set up everything so there would hardly be any acceleration.

Wanna' share some minds and/or experiences?

Answer: 
Good answers; I thought I might provide a different view.

I'd write my project as to test one (or more) hypothesis.

> 
> At the end of this project, we will verify or refute the hypothesis that it is possible to X (e.g. spawn a root shell using CVE-YY-xxxx).
> 
> 
> 

I guess at a basic level, I'm challenging the validity of "then the client will have lost money with a non-working product. " - validating or refuting a hypothesis should both have value.
You can structure this as a T&M + Incentive contract
----------------------------------------------------

The goal is to avoid the client as well as the vendor being too unhappy in the event of a failed project.

To keep it simple, let us say that you need to spend 160 hours on this project and that your T&M charges are typically $100/hr. Let us also say that your resource cost is $60/hr and the rest is your mark-up.

You will quote a T&M rate of $60/hr and add an incentive payment of $6400 lumpsum if the outcome meets the success threshold.

> 
> If I charge only if the finished product works then I will have lost 1
> month of work in the case the R&D is not successful.
> 
> 
> 

You won't be too unhappy if you are not out-of-pocket by taking this project. Also, it is a good learning experience for you.

> 
> If I charge even
> if the finished product is not working as expected (say 80% of success
> in the classification task), then the client will have lost money with
> a non-working product.
> 
> 
> 

The client won't be too unhappy if they paid the bare minimum out-of-pocket costs but not any mark-ups.

Most importantly, you will have a huge motivation to complete the project successfully and the client can see that too!