I'm a certified project manager, and project management is how I make most of my money.
In recent years I've become fairly disillusioned with the profession, particularly as it's been promoted by the Project Management Institute. In fact, I've slowly been reducing my ties to that organization because of the monolithic approach they take towards everything. Their philosophy is completely antithetical to the world I see developing, yet it is at the core of what new project managers are taught is the "right way" to do things.
At its core, PMI is about doing things in the way that was mastered during WWII: Plan carefully, budget, assign resources, measure progress against the desired tasks, make adjustments if anything deviates from the plan, and meet the goals for delivery. Like most organizations, PMI tends to promote what it knows. When reality conflicts, it tries to identify reasons that the reality should change.
Traditional Project Management (TPM) works well if your goal is to deliver B-24s, or Sherman tanks. Also works well if you're a government agency whose goal is to put into place a program that doesn't need to actually satisfy the needs of the customer, becasue the "customer" either doesn't care or is completely captive. Sort of works if you're a private contractor working on a defense contract, where you're paid on a cost-plus basis, get to pass along the cost of all changes to the government, and never have to worry about competition.
It doesn't work well in much of the real world, where change is ever-present, your competitors and customers are always introducing new demands, and the very technology upon which you must build your products and services is changing on a week-to-week basis.
It's no accident that the largest PMI chapter on the west coast is the one in the Sacramento Valley, whose president proudly proclaims that her chapter territory covers two major state governments (California and Nevada), or that one of the smallest is in Silicon Valley, where process and bureaucracy always takes a backseat to delivering real value. It's also no wonder that the largest PMI chapter in the world is based in Washington DC, which has become the world's greatest promulgator of rules and processes while creating little of value.
What is need today is a better framework for delivering real value to real customers in real time without the artifacts and the bureaucracy. Doing so is antithetical to the way most large organziations work and presents a real threat to some of them, which is why some of the big "TPM" shops out there -- led by big media and big telco -- have been doing everything in their power to stem the changes. But it's been happenning all around the world nonetheless, and many of those old TPM business models are being challenged despite some heavy hitting legislation directed at supporting them. In some cases new ideas build on traditional methodologies, in others it tosses them out completely. In the coming weeks and months I'll be exploring those in greater detail.
-btc
