Tagged with: best-practices • identity • pmbok • project-management • psychology • social • sociology
This is really my favorite Project Management question to which I don’t have a real answer: are our industry’s best practices really that, or do we merely say they are because as a PM we are expected to say so? You know that when you fall, you experience pain. You have felt that as a child. But how did you know that if you look cross-eyed and the clock strikes, your eyes will stay crossed forever? Because momma said so. But if momma was always right, why did she run away with the neighbor?
Photography by The Gold Guys.
Do we make a Gantt Chart because it a really good thing to do, or because we are expected to do so?
As I wrote almost a year ago: We radiate to the outside world our icons like Gantt Charts, two-digits precise risk assessments, large documents that seems to cover every little aspect imaginable. If you are a member of our group, you ooze control. I once told my wife that I was unable to comply to her request. She smacked me on the head telling me that she was not my customer. So, I assume that we also have a specific language that sets us apart from other mortals. By adopting our symbols, our rituals and speak newbie PMs try to affiliate themselves with the group called Professional Project Managers.
Craig Brown over at Better Projects revamped my interest by digging up some great and intriguing reference from Stephen Jonathan Whitty: A Memetic Paradigm of Project Management.
“The question it raises for me is how much is project management knowledge constructed to solve real problems, and how much of it is self-repeating, self-sustaining behaviors that act mainly as a way for PM professionals to establish and maintain their importance in their professional community.”
Of course the answer of this question might be difficult, as it would be it depends. The real power of raising this question is not the final answer, as there is none in my opinion. The power of this question is to proceed with caution in accepting stuff that you are told by trainers, teachers and bloggers like me.
In an even more mindshifting article, “The PM BOK Code“, Whitty writes:
“… in order to socially survive in the organizational environment, individuals are driven to puts on the performance of project manager as an actor would perform project scenes in the theatre of organizations.”
And this is becoming more and more an obsession. It is fueled by the actual recruiting process that stimulates complying to The Professional PM Code:
“The process of recruiting project managers seems almost reduced to the question, “Are you PRINCE2 certified?”
I live in Europe, so I guess the American variant of this question is, “Are you PMP certified?” Who cares about a master’s degree in PM? Who cares about your experience? Do you have the stamp of approval?” I wrote for TechTaget in November last year.
Sticking to The Code has also other “benefits”: It assists in people’s tendency to prefer to fail conservatively.
“The idea behind this is that people would rather choose an option that they know, that they have done in the past, EVEN if the outcome is likely to be unsuccessful, than trey something new, where the outcome may be positive, but unsure. An example is the use of the waterfall approach. Although the outcome will almost be guaranteed not to be the desired one, because it is an accepted approach, people will prefer it above agile approaches that are unknown to them.”
Go through the references in this post. Make up your mind. Do you do what you do because you are supposed to, or because it seems the right thing to do? And let me know your honest opinion on this matter.
Suggested link on the same subject: “Magic Beans” or credible alternatives by Glen Alleman.
“Do you do what you do because you are supposed to, or because it seems the right thing to do?”
Regardless if you are PM or not, a person with integrity will the right thing. In PM screech, the best way to describe is the “PM ethics”
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to answer the bigger question “are our industry’s best practices really that?” – most often its not- most PM follow the rigor of the corporate folio , because they need to toe the line and play the game. They maybe successful w/projects, but is it really cutting edge and best current practices for the market space ? IMHO, there is always areas that can be improved. Processes and methods need to change with market demands, most companies fall behind on the innovations curve.
thanks for the comment. You’re quite right, that behavior can slow down innovation… great remark.
Cheers
Bas
The human behavior is best observed in the stock market because of the mass of data available to the analyst. Herding of investors is a known phenomenon. People follow trend and in doing so they actually reinforce the trend even though it might be wrong. I believe lots of PMs follow trend and they do enforce a misleading trend because others do so. If the trend is to apply excessive control they end up doing that.
The climate of business is as much predictable as the weather forecast is. Only for a short period ahead we may be comfortable wirh the weather forecast. Likewise; uncertainty is very high in project management. The question is what to control? A deciding factor is the changing climate of business. It is uncontrollable and unpredictable. We may follow the trend of attemting to control the uncontrolable to end up in chasing a thread of smoke. We need to innovate new management doctrines for a rapidly changing work environment.
Thank you, Bas for an illuminating posting.
Talking of PM trends, have a read of what appears to be Whitty’s take on the standards for complex project management. I found the paper here, but there’s also a link to google video of a talk on the same. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:13419
Hi Wil, great catch. Enough food for thought again
Here is the link directly to the video presentation:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4844531765437347321
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This stuff of Whitty’s has been going ’round and ’round in my mind for months since your first post. I’ve been following the comments of others on his published papers too, including the material on managing complexity. But I also find he’s produced some unpublished material and I think the concepts in this so called discussion paper offer great insight in how we currently fail to measure project management skills. The paper I’m talking about is called “A War On Terms: moving the discussion of managing complexity in projects forward”. It’s an easily missed pdf on whitty’s website:
http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~jonw/A%20War%20On%20Terms%20By%20Jon%20Whitty.pdf
Hi Will, I am glad you pointed me to the PDF… it’s on my to-do list for this week.
I think he hits on the most difficult of all problems: the Project Manager self (as a person).
If you have more insights or references, please don’t hesitate to share.
Cheers
Bas
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Bas, I've got another Whitty item for you.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9010523…
I attended the 3rd talk in this series in Canberra. I got a lot from the talk, but the question time responses were even better. Shame they aren't included on this video.
Wil
WOW Wil, this is really good stuff. Thanks. You have been thinking about the Whitty material for almost a year now. What is the most important lesson you took from him?
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Phew…not sure bit I’ll have a go at an answer. So in my opinion, what he’s done is try to understand the behaviour of project management from an evolutionary point of view. It is quite counterintuitive (as others have remarked) because he puts forward the idea that the things we do (project management things) are driven by evolutionary pressures (from the environment etc) and we do these things not to make us more productive or to deliver the work on time, but to survive the corporate environment we find ourselves in. First time I’ve voiced this out loud. Hope it makes sense.
From the Whitty material in general I feel there’s more to come that we haven’t seen yet. At the event I went to he alluded to a couple of papers or studies he said he was in the process of publishing, but he wouldn’t be drawn too much on the specifics. He did mention that one of the studies showed that project managers (or people who manage projects) get addicted to certain aspects of the “game play” (his words), and this is in part why us project managers do some of the things we do. We don’t do them because they increase our productivity; we do them because we enjoy doing them.
I also can’t quite get to his level on the evolutionary approach. An example of this is when he talks about humans it’s as if he were talking about dogs or ants, or any other animal. ? Best way I can sum this up. It’s probably because I don’t really fully understand what evolution means or the processes involved.
When I read his papers, it’s like watching star wars 4 and 5. I have a sense that he’s got episodes 6 and 1, 2, and 3, up his sleeve somewhere, or at least know what they should be about.
Wil
“Hope it makes sense.” It makes perfectly sense. I honored your comments with a entire posting
Thanks again for pointing this out. I definitely will come back on this topic… but yes, it is something huge to wrap your mind around.
Bas, I’ve mentioned this on a post on another blog. On the Whitty view of project management I’ve found this http://www.youtube.com/user/DrJonathanWhitty it’s about the original paper in this thread – the memetic approach. This has cleared up a major point for me which I thought I’d got, but obviously not. The meme of something is not the ‘thing’ itself, it’s the instructions of how to build and use the ‘thing’. As the tape points out, the Gantt chart meme is not the Gantt chart (as I’d thought) but the instructions on how to make one. Makes me look at my PM text books differently I can tell you. It’s full of memes…and I’m not sure why I’m using them – to keep me in my job or to help with the project. More food for thought.
Hey Will, thanks again for the link and comments. I like it so much I dedicated a blog post to it
http://www.basdebaar.com/the-peacock-and-the-project-manager-4520.html
Thanks!
Hello Bas,
There’s a new video on this you-tube channel. Worth a look. It’s call the private life of project managers. It’s in the style of david attenborough’s programs that explores the lives of animals and plants, but this one looks at Project Managers!
Hey Will, thanks!
People can find it here: