Is project management supposed to be that stressful?
First of all, I do want to acknowledge what a privilege it is to still have a job in the current context. I come to you as experienced professionals to help me figure if I am overreacting/not fit for the job.
I am a 31 y.o project manager for a very small organization. I was hired to coordinate a pretty big project (approx 6 millions) involving 7 other organizations, my org is the coordinator. The funder is renown for being quite exigent.
Now when they hired me the project had been ongoing for a few months. Well, on paper because nothing had been done yet, not even partnership agreements with the implementing partners. The person that was in charge of designing the project was on long leave and my direct supervisor was the very freshly promoted new director, she was super busy and didn't know much about what had been done so far. Mind you this is the first time this org landed such a big project with this donor and had never implemented any project with these partners, ever.
My role is to manage everything related to the project, financial and operational aspects included. My organization and the implementing partners have no clue about what is expected in terms of compliance. I had some experience with this donor but not at this level and had to figure pretty much everything out on my own. Partners are quite chaotic (to say the least), don't follow guidelines, don't respect deadlines, always try to bypass the donor's rules hoping I don't figure it out. The last two reporting exercises have been a nightmare. Also, no one basically check what I submit to the donor so I am in constant anxiety thinking I may have made a mistake or missed one. I am stuck between a very exigent donor and a very dysfunctional bunch of implementing partners and have no internal support/supervision.
My questions are:
-how common is it that the coordination a project this size only relies on one person? In the implementation partners' project teams, I can tell the roles are divided (for example they have financial teams and M&E teams)
- what minimum requirements in terms of org structure are required to have the capacity to properly manage big, multi year projects like this one? We don't have a financial department, just an accountant. And then 2 PM including me doing the financial monitoring of projects.
I am trying to figure if this is just the job and in that case I would think my way out because I'm not fit for this chaos.
Thank you :)