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# If your project collapses when the PM's on holiday, that's not a compliment
- URL: https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/if-your-project-collapses-when-the-pms-on-holiday-thats-not-a-compliment/
- Published: 2026-11-02T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-02T07:00:00.000Z
- Description: You'll hear it said as praise. "We couldn't do it without them." "Everything goes through them." "Honestly, when they're off, it all falls apart."
- Author: Jamie Wright
- Tags: Project Management

You'll hear it said as praise. "We couldn't do it without them." "Everything goes through them." "Honestly, when they're off, it all falls apart."

That last one gets said as if it's a good thing. It isn't.

A PM whose absence brings a project to its knees hasn't made themselves valuable. They've made themselves a single point of failure, and somewhere along the way they've mistaken that for job security.

## What it looks like

Developers aren't allowed to talk to the client directly. Every question has to be "run past me first". Decisions sit waiting for the PM to be free. Information lives in their head, their inbox or a spreadsheet only they understand.

Their calendar is rammed, their notifications are endless, and they wear it like a badge.

Then they book a week in Spain and the whole thing quietly stalls. The team doesn't know what's been agreed. The client doesn't know who to talk to. Someone spends Monday morning digging through old email threads trying to work out what was promised.

## Why it happens

Sometimes it's control. Being the hub of everything feels important, and letting go feels risky.

Sometimes it's insecurity. If the team could run without them, what exactly are they for? So they hold on to every thread, consciously or not.

And sometimes it's just habit. They started out doing everything because they had to, and never stopped.

Whatever the reason, the effect is the same. The team moves at the speed of one person's availability.

## How to spot it

Look at what happens when they're off. If the answer is "not much gets done", you've found it.

Notice who the team goes to when they're stuck. If it's always the PM, even for things they could sort themselves, ask why.

Check where decisions and context are written down. If the honest answer is "ask them", that's the problem.

## What good looks like

The best PMs I've worked with were trying, quietly and constantly, to make themselves less necessary.

They put developers in front of clients. They wrote decisions down where anyone could find them. They let the team make calls and backed them when they did. They built processes that kept running whether they were in the room or not.

Counterintuitively, that's what made them valuable. Not that the project needed them every minute, but that it kept moving when they weren't there, and they were free to deal with the things that genuinely needed them.

Raising a team's ceiling means they can reach things without you. If they still need you to lift them every time, you've just made yourself the ceiling.

Indispensable is a risk, not a skill.