Projects……the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the Starship Skewbprise, its continuing mission: to explore strange new opportunities; to seek out new clients and new projects; to boldly Project Manage where no Project Manager has gone before!

I often feel like the captain of a starship hurtling through the galaxy of deadlines, deliverables, and stakeholder drama. My vessel? A finely tuned project plan. My crew? A diverse mix of personalities, each with their own quirks, priorities, and tendency to ignore timelines. My mission? To boldly deliver what no team has delivered before—on time, on budget, and ideally without anyone crying in the toilets.

Welcome aboard the USS Skewbprise, where project management meets interstellar diplomacy.

Why I Am Captain Kirk (Minus the Space Hair and girdle)

Let’s be honest—every project needs a Captain Kirk. Someone who’s not afraid to take the helm, make bold decisions, and occasionally charm their way through stakeholder turbulence. That’s me. As the Project Manager, I’m the one steering the ship, rallying the crew, and shouting “Engage!” every time we kick off a sprint.

While Kirk may have been commanding the USS Enterprise through wormholes and Klingon skirmishes, his leadership style is surprisingly familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to deliver a project on time and under budget. Here’s how his captainly actions mirror the daily life of a Project Manager:

Like Kirk, I:

• Boldly Go – Lead with vision even when the vision is “Let’s just survive this quarter/phase/sprint”. Charting a bold course through project chaos while pretending you didn’t just make half of it up on the fly.
• Make bold, fast decisions – making confident calls under pressure, even when the timeline looks like a sci-fi plot twist, usually while holding a Romulan Ale and using evasive manoeuvres to dodge incoming torpedoes.
• Trust my crew – Delegating with confidence while resisting the urge to micromanage every spreadsheet cell like it’s a warp core, even when they say, “It’ll be ready by Friday” with suspicious confidence.
• Manage a diverse crew – balancing personalities, priorities, and passive-aggressive emails like a first contact situation.
• Navigate crises – keeping calm while the Bridge is on fire—and somehow still steering the ship to safety and delivering the project.
• Stakeholder diplomacy – Negotiating with clients, sponsors, and “feedback enthusiasts” like it’s a peace treaty with Klingons.
• Wear the blame (and occasionally the glory) – taking responsibility when things go wrong, and sharing the credit when they miraculously go right.

Sure, I don’t have a phaser or a starship, but I do have a colour-coded Trello board, a Fieldy and the ability to translate stakeholder nonsense into actionable tasks. And that, my friends, is the real power of a modern-day Kirk.

So who is joining me on this voyage…….

The Crew Manifest: Stakeholders of the Starfleet

Mr Spock – The Data-Driven Analyst

Logical, precise, and emotionally unavailable. Spock wants metrics, KPIs, and a dashboard so clean it could be used for surgery.

• Role on the Enterprise: Science Officer. Master of logic, facts, enigmatic eyebrow raises accompanied by a “”
• Stakeholder Equivalent: The Business Analyst or Finance Lead who wants everything backed by data, preferably in a spreadsheet with pivot tables and conditional formatting.
• Example: Spock once calculated the odds of survival mid-crisis. Your stakeholder does the same—except it’s the odds of delivering on time with only 60% of the resources. Spoiler: it’s not good.
• PM Strategy: Give them facts, figures, and a spreadsheet with conditional formatting. Avoid jokes—they cause confusion. Avoid emotion. Present your timeline like a Vulcan thesis.

Scotty – The Overworked Developer

Always in the engine room, muttering about unrealistic timelines and broken APIs. Will deliver miracles in half the time quoted, but only after a dramatic sigh and three cups of coffee.

• Role on the Enterprise: Chief Engineer. Miracle worker. Constantly under pressure.
• Stakeholder Equivalent: Your tech lead who’s juggling five bugs, three feature requests, and one existential crisis.
• Example: Scotty once said, “Ye cannae change the laws of physics laddie!” Your developer says, “I can’t make it live by Friday!” Same energy.
• PM Strategy: Protect Scotty from scope creep like he’s the last dilithium crystal. And never say, “It’s just a small tweak.”

Uhura – The Communications Specialist

Fluent in every language except vague requirements but especially Project BS and Jargonese. Uhura wants clarity, consistency, and a meeting invite that doesn’t clash with five others.

• Role on the Enterprise: Communications Officer. Fluent in everything.
• Stakeholder Equivalent: The comms or marketing lead who wants clarity, consistency, and a meeting invite that doesn’t clash with five others.
• Example: Uhura once translated alien languages mid-crisis. Your stakeholder translates dev-speak into client-friendly copy while dodging jargon like Klingon Disruptor fire.
• PM Strategy: Communicate clearly. Follow up promptly. Never send an email titled “Quick Question.”

Bones – The Battle Scarred Stakeholder

Passionate, emotional, invested, dramatic, and prone to saying, “We’re doomed!” at the first sign of delay. Bones cares deeply—and loudly – and isn’t afraid to let you know.

• Role on the Enterprise: Chief Medical Officer. Passionate, dramatic, prone to shouting “We’re doomed!”
• Stakeholder Equivalent: The stakeholder who feels everything deeply , personally and loudly—especially when the deadline moves. The eternal pessimist.  Been there, done that, seen it fail.
• Example: Bones once yelled, “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker!” This stakeholder yells, “Dammit Jase, I’m a Doctor not a Scrum Master!” when asked to approve something in 24 hours.
• PM Strategy: Listen patiently. Validate feelings. Distract and redirect panic into action items. Keep biscuits nearby.

Chekov – The Eager Junior Stakeholder

• Role on the Enterprise: Tactical Officer. Young, enthusiastic, and convinced everything was invented in Russia—including phasers.
• Stakeholder Equivalent: The likeable junior stakeholder who’s full of limitless energy, ideas and a slightly concerning level of confidence in their untested strategy. Has not yet developed the Project PTSD of other stakeholders.
• Example: Chekov once insisted the photon torpedo was a Russian invention. Your stakeholder insists they’re “wery confident” their approach “will definitely work”—despite zero evidence and one very nervous developer.
• PM Strategy: Channel their enthusiasm into low-risk tasks, gently fact-check their claims, and keep them away from anything marked “critical path.”

Sulu – The Calm, Capable Stakeholder

• Role on the Enterprise: Unflappable, precise, and quietly brilliant at steering the ship through chaos.
• Stakeholder Equivalent: The dependable stakeholder who doesn’t say much but always delivers. Calm in a crisis, and probably solving problems while you’re still explaining them.
• Example: Sulu once piloted the Enterprise through a spatial anomaly while sipping tea. Your stakeholder fixes a blocker before you’ve even logged it in Jira.
• PM Strategy: Trust them with complex tasks, check in occasionally, and never mistake their silence for disengagement—they’re probably saving the project while you’re charming the pants off the Project Sponsor.

The Redshirts – The Passive Participants

They’re in every meeting, camera off, mic muted, possibly asleep. No one’s sure what they do, but they’re definitely on the invite list.

• Role on the Enterprise: Security crew. Often silent. Occasionally vaporised.
• Stakeholder Equivalent: The people who attend every meeting, say nothing, and may or may not be awake.
• Example: Redshirts rarely survive away missions. Your passive stakeholders rarely survive action items. They lose interest quickly.
• PM Strategy: Engage them with direct questions. Or quietly remove them from future invites. They won’t notice.

The Klingons – The Aggressive Stakeholders

• Project Equivalent: The stakeholders who come in hot—demanding updates, pushing deadlines, and challenging decisions like it’s a duel of honour.
• Behaviour: They love confrontation, thrive on urgency, and believe every meeting should end with someone metaphorically bleeding.
• Example: “qatlh wej ta’lu’?” followed by a dramatic pause and an intense stare that could melt a RAID log. A d’k tahg is thrown onto the table.
• PM Strategy: Stay calm, stay factual, and never take it personally. They respect strength, so show confidence in your plan—but keep a metaphorical bat’leth (or a well-prepared status report) handy.

The Romulans – The Secretive Stakeholders

• Project Equivalent: The stakeholders who operate in the shadows. They’re involved… but you’re never quite sure how much. They pop up with last-minute feedback and mysterious approvals from “higher up.”
• Behaviour: Cryptic emails, vague feedback, and sudden escalations that feel like they came from a cloaked ship.
• Example: “We’ve had a Tal Shiar Audit…your lack of progress is….unacceptable.” followed by a complete change in direction and suspicious lack of explanation. Two pointy eared goons with Lego hair in wonderfully 80’s shoulder pads drag you off never to be seen again.
• PM Strategy: Document everything. Ask clarifying questions. Shine light into the shadows with regular updates and transparent communication. And always assume there’s a second agenda—because there probably is.

Navigating the Project Galaxy

Being a PM on the USS Skewbprise means constantly steering between asteroid fields of ambiguity and black holes of indecision. You’re the charismatic leader of a ragtag group of strange creatures called Stakeholders, their inspirational leader, the translator, the peacekeeper, the one who knows where the RAID log is buried and how to use it as a weapon.

You’ll face:

• Scope Creep Anomalies – where one small change becomes a full system rebuild and it appeared out of nowhere.
• Stakeholder Wormholes – at the beginning there was enthusiasm and senior leadership support, now your stakeholders have disappeared into thin air.
• Temporal (Timeline) Distortions – where “next week” means “next quarter.”
• Budget Black Holes – where money disappears faster than you can say “change request.”

And yet, you press on. Because deep down, you know the truth: Project Managers are the unsung captains of every successful mission. We don’t wear capes—we wear smart-casual and carry notebooks filled with colour-coded chaos.

Final Transmission

So next time you’re wrangling stakeholders, herding tasks, and deflecting last-minute feedback like phaser blasts, remember: you’re not just managing a project—you’re commanding a starship. And while the crew may be unpredictable, the mission is clear:

Deliver boldly. Communicate clearly. And never underestimate the power of a well-timed photon torpedo.

Captain Marden, signing off.

Go forth and projectify!

By Jason Marsen

Jason Marsen is Project Manager at Skewb. To speak with him about this topic in more detail, you can connect with him on LinkedIn.