I was placed on a PIP. Now I'm questioning my career choice in project management
I was assigned a project with a set start and end date. The project duration was for one year. At the onset of the project, after it was approved by governance, I was not provided resources to begin development work or to even provide estimates. The resources , who were all contractors , were finally on boarded 5.5 months later. Placing the project at risk, as it began almost 6 months late and without management taking this into consideration and extending the delivery date. In addition, there was a critical dependency on an external vendor, who was 3 months late delivering a backend solution that would be integrated into the front end. We lost 2 key resources along the way who quit. Those resources were never replaced. Yet, despite all of these setbacks, I successfully delivered the project on the last date of project. We ended up meeting all milestones. One month after final delivery, I was placed on a PIP. The PIP called out how the project missed deadlines, the project plan lacked detail, meeting notes, and risks were not communicated. All of these accusations are false. I had a clear, detailed project plan that was reviewed on a weekly basis. Meeting notes, action items, and escalations were communicated. I raised risks and qualified several high risks and placed the project in red status. Afterwards, I was told by my manager to lower risks because they didn't want to bring attention to the project sponsor. My thought is I'm being thrown under the bus for managements failures to escalate risks, issues, and to solve problems. At the end, again, the project was delivered in time due to my leadership. Yet my reward was being placed on a performance improvement plan. Am I being used as a scapegoat? Is this how all projects are managed by senior leadership? It this a common thing in the project management field? Right now I am so discouraged and have lost any interest in being a PM. I'm seriously questioning this career field.
Posted Aug 14, 2026, 12:45 AM UTC