Can you afford NOT to have a Project Manager?

I am writing this article as, having rescued countless of delayed projects, I am always amazed at how and why projects slip. Here are the top 3 excuses:

1. "We track our activities with [Jira, Trello, Slack, etc]"
   Having a to-do list is nice - it keeps people busy. It does not, however, pre-empt issues, track timelines and hold people to key milestones.
   I love Jira - it's great for agile working and sprint deliveries. But if the end product has multi-dependencies, is expensive with a drop-dead deadline, this style of management puts a huge risk on time and costs.
   However, if time is elastic and costs not an issue, then yes, you do not need a project manager
2. "We are an Agile company. Waterfall is too old school for us"
   Let's use the analogy of building a new house without a Project Manager. There will be architectural misalignment, poor co-ordination between different suppliers which will all lead to time and cost delay. However, if it is just to put the bathroom in, that is an agile delivery.
3. "Our Tech/Engineering/etc Lead can do the job"
   The skillsets are quite different. Having a specialist to manage a project is a misallocation of resource. Just as the F1 driver would not get out to supervise the work done at the pit stop, why torture your tech lead with management?

Can you afford NOT to have a Project Manager

Can the project afford not to have a good project manager? Some quick maths: say a project has 12-month deliverable with a run rate of $100,000. If it slips by a month, that is $100,000 gone down the rabbit hole.

Generally, an unmanaged project tend to slip by more 10%. Why? Without someone watching the boiling pot, alarm bells tend to only sound when there is about 15-25% of time left to testing. At this point, there is a realisation that the product is only 40-50% done, which would result in an unquantifiable (mathematically, its a 15-35%) overrun. This would lead to the panic hiring of a project manager, and, assuming the project gods favour the company, a good one is found. 

Regardless of how efficient this new joiner is, there is absolutely no way to turn back time. This person can at best minimise the cost and time overrun. This compression of work tends to lead to quality issues and/or a reduction in features.

In conclusion, the risks of not having a good project manager are:

• Cost overruns 
• Quality issues
• Delays
• Reputational damage

So, can your project afford NOT to have a Project Manager?