The last couple of weeks were an amazing experience for me: I became a member of PMI’s New Media Council (together with great people like Cornelius Fichtner, Dave Garrett, Elizabeth Harrin, Hal Macomber, Jerry Manas, Josh Nankivel, Chalyce Nollsch and Raven Young) and attended PMI EMEA Global Congress.

Blog postings about the PMI EMEA Congress in Amsterdam:

By Bob Tarne:
PMI EMEA Congress, Day 1
PMI EMEA Congress, Day 2
Final thoughts on PMI EMEA

By Jesse Fewell:
Live From PMI Global Congress Amsterdam – Day 1
Live From PMI Global Congress Amsterdam – Days 2 and 3

By Dave Prior:
Day Two of the 2009 PMI EMEA Global Congress

Thanks everyone for giving me this great experience!

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Role Of The PMBoK Guide In The Project Management Profession is a post from: Project Shrink.

Love it!

Met some great people like Dave Prior, the author of the Drunken PM blog and the ITT SIG Podcast, and a big agile fan. Great day for him. On this first day of the conference a lot of attention went to Agile practices.

You can watch this short episode of The Project Shrink on YouTube or below.

You should also check out the interview Dave did this weekend about PMI creating virtual communities.

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Audio Only Version of Project Shrink podcast

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First Day At PMI EMEA Congress With Dave Prior is a post from: Project Shrink.

SORRY. THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED!

This September you can win a free subscription to The Project Management PrepCast, a great way to prepare for the PMP exam. This site is hosted by my friend Cornelius Fichtner from the PM Podcast. Every one that issues a comment on this blog before September 15th will enter the drawing. Of course, your comments need to be relevant to the discussions

Just to be sure: I will only provide ONE free subscription to this site. From all the commenters until 15 September we will select a random winner.

The Project Management PrepCast is the first true and “pod-ready” PMP® Podcast. Students are able to instantly download all 77 episodes and intensify their studies. The average episode lasts 22 minutes giving the students a total of 30 hours of quality PMP audio material.

The podcast covers concepts, tools and techniques in preparation for the PMP® or CAPM® certification exam. We cover material in the PMBOK® Guide, and we include the necessary models, theories and formulas not covered in the Guide.

The podcast offers:

• Instant access to all 77 episodes.
• Plays on all MP3 players.
• 30 hours of training on the PMBOK® Guide and other relevant material.
• 30 contact hours.
• Learn when and wherever you want.
• Listen to each episode as often as you want.
• Designed to help you understand the concepts instead of memorizing them

Win Free Preparation For PMP Exam is a post from: Project Shrink.

So, management creates a plan, throws it to the working people, and that is about it; no comments on how the working people should operate. We all know that to start a specific task, some of the needed materials or resources might be missing. Then the informal and creative process of fixing and improvisation will start to allow to start on the task anyway, or to minimize the effects on other activities.

Although the execution of project tasks consist for a large part of improvising to make the scheduled tasks happen, the plan driven methods provide no underlying basics for the execution. There is just the plan, and if something has to be changed, it start by changing the plan. And thats all there is to it.

Executing The Plan is a post from: Project Shrink.

Who cares? Whats the use?

Well actually, every PM should care. If you know the ideas that are behind a specific method, you will easier learn it, and, more important in my view, you see its limitations before you run into a brick wall.

Fair enough, this theoretic mumbo jumbo is not everyone’s cup of tea; so let me help you out by giving you my version of it all; and believe me, that version will have every scholar in Project Management do a back flip, but heck, it is just how I get it, and how I store that stuff in my brain; so, though luck for all of them¦ (grin).

Lets turn to plan-driven methods for a start. In essence, with such a method you should define every step that has to be performed in detail up front: the actual task, the time lines, the organization, and the procedures that should be followed. This will increase the predictability, stability, and high assurance of the process and the products it produces. You design a plan, you issue the orders, and you make sure everybody sticks to this original strategy. Examples are PMP and Prince2.

Lauri Koskela and Greg Howell describe in this paper what the underlying theories are for the plan-driven PM methods. This entry is based on how I parse their text in my mind.

First of all, there is not one theory that explains project management; it is a collection of several fundamental ideas, the theory of project, and theories of management.

Theory Of Project

The theory of project views tasks and operations as a transformation process. So, you have some inputs, a change happens, and presto, you get some outputs. You throw some garbage in, the team has a go at it, and you get some garbage out. You provide requirements specifications as input, the operation programming starts, and the end result is some running program.

Like some Russian Matryoshka dolls (the little dolls that have little dolls in them – EDIT: I orginally thought they were called “Babushka”, but apparently that means “grandmother”, thanks to Nariman for pointing that out to me) each transformation can consist of multiple smaller transformation. Requirements specification A, B and C are input, Programming A, B and C happens, and you get as output program A, B and C. The management principles behind this all use the fact that you can play with the inputs, outputs and decomposition of the tasks.

Theory Of Management

To describe the management part, three theories are needed: management-as-planning, the dispatching model and the thermostat model.

The idea behind management-as-planning is, that management sokes up all the information about the process, creates a detailed sequence of actions, with time and resources assigned, throws the plan to the operational level and yells just do what the plan says. This last part is the dispatching model: you issue an order down the chain of command that someone has to start on a task, and that will be it; the worker will automatically without any hesitation or problem start working on it.

If you have the management-as-planning view of the world you think that there is a direct relationship between what is on paper (the planning) and what happens in reality.

If you are creating a plan that will be executed blindly, you must be very sure that you know exactly what must be done; you must almost be able to predict the future. And that is exactly what is the appeal of this approach to management: it provides a sense of predictability (no surprises will occur) and you have the ultimate control of the situation; change the planning, and all the working people will change what they are doing. Paper is reality.

If the paper plan is right, than any deviation from the plan in reality is evil. Enter The thermostat model. Control is in this model nothing more than looking for reality to be not in line with the plan, and kick the real world back into shape, so it fits the plan again. You define upfront the desired situation, you put in the thermometer ones in a while into the project, and when you dont have the desired temperature, you correct the process until you have your temperature.

From a management point of view, this is a good thing; the process is nice and predictable and you have ultimate control. But next time, I will turn to the part were reality kicks in the butt.

WTF: Project Management Theories? is a post from: Project Shrink.