You forgot... 99% of Project Managers running IT system implementation projects are IT freaks.. they do not have Business background, are not business savvy or really understand the delivery impact for the client, customer and END USER. I think there needs to be a wider group of backgrounds recruited which will give complimentary insight and right focal balance. This is where I see major down fall in all the projects I have been involved with, as just at the implementation stage, some contractor (which is another MAJOR ISSUE in IT projects) stuffed up and failed to consult 'the business' and 'user viability' especially in PDT and UAT that projects get stoped - rewritten- delayed, resulting in a lot of angry people and wasted money.
I think if you have been in the game for 20yrs you are just a dangerous as the YOUNG UPSTARTS that come in trying to prove their ego to get their cash bonus.

"Gabino Carballo" I agree about your conclusions, but your statements about the derivation of engineering and architecture are off-base.

In general, engineering is is the application of knowledge to utilize natural resources for human purposes. Farming using live natural resources, so is a subset of engineering.

Professional engineering evolved from the design and building of engines (machines) of war, and civic infrastructure such as viaducts and roads. Architecture is an offshoot of engineering that focuses on human aspects artificially constructed structures.

If landscape architects are soul-searching about whether they are professionals, then they aren't. I think that the label and self-perception are problems, because there is an association with landscaping, which is generally considered to be a cosmetic rather than substantive activity. From my perspective, it's general engineering focused on the environment. Practitioners who effectively use the hard-won engineering knowledge of the last 15000 years know that they are professionals, and don't worry about labels.

I hope that they are, because our species' survival may depend on them.

PM is not really a profession because it is too early: it lacks sufficient recognition and specific expertise. Give it another 50 years and it maybe. Most professions were not professions at all in the past. Medicine was practised by barbers and quacks. Architects were glorified painters or people who were able to read a measured drawing. Engineers started out as gardeners that got over ambitious.
However, you can conduct your work in a professional manner, ie: with care for your client and diligent work. This is an interesting discussion that leads nowhere. I can tell you because I am a landscape architect, and we suffer the same soul searching malaise.

"You are also not directly building the widgets. So its overhead. Not recognizing that fact causes many more problems than calling it overhead." This isn't universally true. I've personally been given large complex projects where I not only built widgets, I was the primary person building the widgets. If I hadn't managed projects in another environment previously, I wouldn't have been nearly as efficient. Was the planning and tracking I did overhead, or part of the overall design and engineering (which I also did).

To me, overhead covers things like rent and liability insurance, for which you pay regardless of how much work you conduct, and which are not related to the service which the organization exists to provide. Employee "benefits" are not overhead, they are part of employee compensation. Unless the work of a particular employee doesn't add value to the product or service the organization delivers, it's not overhead. A project manager's work to deliver the project's result IS part of the direct cost of a product or service, so it the cost of engineering to design the system, labor to build it, test it, train the operators. The mere fact that a particular organization is unable or unwilling to charge expenses directly related to one department or project to that project or department does not make it overhead, just lazy accounting.

"just enough” - every PM action we take mitigates a risk" and "anything you do from a project management perspective adds work to the project", both can't be true. Spending excess hours over-managing a project doesn't reduce project cost, doesn't inevitably cut other losses, and increases the risk of project cost overrun.

If every PM action we take mitigates a risk, to know exactly how much PM was enough, you'd have to figure out the expected loss for every risk to know if calculating the expected loss justified calculating it. PM isn't primarily about risk management, it's about getting a desired result with a reasonable investment of resources - including the management required to do so. "Just enough" is a recognition of two facts - nothing is ever perfect and diminishing returns. You can't tell in advance what will be just enough PM, you can only recognize it in retrospect, so it's part of testing.

A more useful concept is "good enough", which concentrates on project specifications, testing and results. One weakness in the linear thinking approach implied by the PM guide is the idea that testing follows construction instead of being part of the initial objectives. Unless a product first has specified measurable results and predetermined ways to measure those results, you don't have a managed project, you can't finish a proper analysis and you can't proceed to design, which is why so many projects fail.

"There absolutely ARE ways to understand which approaches will be more useful up front. It just takes experience to know which to apply." is true, but only useful if your experience includes the same kind of organization, same technology employed in the project, the same general type of work and an understanding of the life cycle for the type of service the project will be delivering. PM isn't a set of approaches, doesn't dictate a design and isn't a guarantee of results.

This applies to PM as much as it does engineering from which PM originated. Real world projects deliver real world results in a constantly evolving non-static real world. The plan is not the work, the map is not the territory, they just give you a place to start. The specific tools and techniques you need to get to your destination may exist somewhere, but aren't necessarily in your toolbox when you start your trip. You may not know they exist or where to get them before you encounter an unforeseeable obstacle.

You may have to invent them.

A reminder that to get PMP certified requires a few years practical experience.

And of course the problem with that is it means a few years project managing $2000 websites equals a few years working on a part of a $250M global enterprise thingy.

Does anyone know what ahppenned to the 'global competencies for PMs' initiative from a few years back? It was defining teirs of projects related to their complexity. (I am a level 3 PM, etc)

Great post title by the way, Josh. It sure gets you to click through.

It would be far more productive to argue about something of substance, but I feel like I have to defend my comment here.

On "add overhead" - anything you do from a project management perspective adds work to the project. You're doing it. You cost money. The net result may be less work or cost overall, but when you map out what you are doing let's be realistic - it's work. You are also not directly building the widgets. So its overhead. Not recognizing that fact causes many more problems than calling it overhead. Call it what you wish. It's work that needs to be accounted for.

On "just enough" - every PM action we take mitigates a risk. There absolutely ARE ways to understand which approaches will be more useful up front. It just takes experience to know which to apply.

The reason I made the comment was to emphasize Josh's point about not being dogmatic - while being supportive of all of the great work that Bill and many others have done in the field. There's great value in all of it, especially if you have the experience to apply it judiciously.

Whether or not a government recognizes an occupation as a "profession" is irrelevant, so is the path that a person takes to a vocation. Government's involvement is to regulate and tax where possible the income-producing efforts of people. The lack of a government doe not prevent someone from practicing a profession.

A profession is characterized by a subject matter and a body of knowledge about it, that has been formalized to some extent and is open to peer review and which has a group of practitioners who seek to improve their knowledge and ability to perform their work. A doctor is a person who treats illnesses. The lack of previous intent, experience or guidance does not mean that a person cannot become a skilled doctor.

All professions evolved from nothing. There weren't stone tablets from some mount given to man from a deity that set out the basic principles for any profession, people developed them, by TRIAL AND ERROR. Someone set the first broken arm. If a doctor was defined as someone trained by a doctor to become a doctor, who trained the first doctor? He trained himself - does that make medicine a non-profession?

The PMBOK Guide, while interesting is just that - a GUIDE to basic principles. That that makes it neither relevant nor useful in any practical sense for managing a particular project. People who choose PM as their field of endeavor may discover some or all of these principles by formal training or experience, but anyone who has managed more than one significant real world project would agree that sucessful PM depends on the particular project, circumstances and available resources.

Techniques that work for one manager may not for another because managers are people, and each is unique. That fact that one may use personal charisma to motivate a group of professionals to self-manage one particular project while another micromanages every aspect with a team of novices to achieve the same successful result does not make one of them a PM and the other not.

So far as using "just-enough" process goes, the idea isn't useful for PM. If there were a way to know in advance exactly how much process were needed, you'd know exactly what work were involved, and no PM would be necessary. You can only know that enough was done after successful completion of a specific task. It's like looking for lost car keys. How many places would you have to look, to look in the minimum number of places? Why would anyone (sane) keep looking after they have been found?

Actually, I think that a lot of people are too tightly wrapped up with the idea of PM as a profession. I'd argue that PM is a quasi-scientific effort to gain status by turning actual practice into theory. The actual practice has existed for centuries in the miltary, in engineering which developed from the military, in agriculture and in government.

What's important is results and costs, not labels.

Many responses in one post ...

1. Whether PM is a profession or not is a function of how you define "profession." Professions are recognized by the general public, by the government, by both, and by neither. PM is currently recognized by neither. "Management" is recognized by the general public. Hairdressers are recognized by the government, and architects are recognized by both. Who knows where PM will end up.

2. The correct answer to every question in project management ... "it depends." Context is king.

3. The correct title of the publication is "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge," shortened to "PMBOK Guide." Referring to it as "the PMBOK" displays your ignorance. Think back to 3rd grade and your mom saying ... "just because everyone else is doing it." Although I can't (and won't) take any responsibility for what they've done with the document since the version I was responsible for (the first one, 1996), it still says that the document covers only a subset of the entire BoK.

4. "Add as much PM overhead" ... No, add ZERO PM overhead. Only do what is necessary. As long as you think of PM as overhead, you've got yourself on a track to be replaced.

5. What else do projects have in common? They are temporary. Unless you work in IT ...

Duncan

Very interesting discussion! My take. I think we need to simply apply common sense to all we do. I have observed that so many people beocme 'tool centric', meaning they rely too much on a specific tool, methodology, approach, framework, or even certification. There are no abosolute rights and wrongs, but there are man, many things that can be helpful. But it all comes down to us simply asking ourselves and the most basic, grass roots level, "Does this make sense?" It it does, move on. If not, keep working it through until it does.

Aditya, I think learning project management from a tool is backwards. Tools are great, but they only become useful when you have an understanding of the fundamentals and some experience to inform your utilization of them.

I think it is very important that a project manager be able to effectively manage a project using pencil and paper, even if they will be using tools like MS Project or Primavera in practice. One of the best scheduling exercises I've ever done involved drawing out a network diagram by hand, doing the forwards and backwards pass and determining slack and the critical path(s) manually. If you understand how to do these things manually, the tools make a lot more sense and you get more out of them.

Project management is NOT being able to use all the gadgets and features of a tool. Too many focus on the tools and miss 80% of what they really should be doing to deliver value.

Josh,
Whats your take on Project Management tools?

I mean again they tend to systemize things and create a process to project management and this may not necessarily be the best thing.

I never used to care about project management, it used to be a buzzword to me but then i started using a tool ( Deskaway ) and i think a lot of what i have learnt and adapted is because of the tool along with my own meandering experiences.

I personally think that the tool has managed to educate me about the essentials because it is based on solid PM principles and i try and do every project differently so there i learn over time and do things differently everytime depending on the size of the team undertaking the project, the kind of persons on the project and so on. So im not a 'project manager' - im just a medium business owner and i stumbled into PM by accident.

Very interesting discussions going on. Joe, I agree that the PMP credential is no guarantee that someone is a good project manager, only that they have a base level of knowledge about the PMBOK, etc. I felt the same way about the MCSE a decade ago, only with that certification I am pretty sure you just had to take the test, and didn't have to provide documentation about years of project experience.

Since I have a degree in project management, perhaps my perspective is different. But just like the certifications, a degree is no guarantee of real competency. Even experience alone is not an indicator of competency. I've met many with decades of experience who I would not cite as competent.

Project management is not a methodology, either. It is a whole collection of tools and soft skills required to lead teams and get things done.

In the end, I'm not sure I care much about whether project management is considered a profession by whatever rule book you want to pull out. It seems Dr. Paul's definition is very specific, and really only includes a minority of what the average person would think of as a profession.

Still, what an interesting discussion! Even though I'm not sure I care about the definitions involved, the thoughts provoked about measuring competency accurately and what people and organizations think about project management are interesting.

I way always taught that PM is a tool to accomplish the task. Being an accountant, a financial analyst, or a computer technition is a profession. Project management is a methodology to complete task and projects. That then me to say I am a "professional" at using a method?

There are times at my former employer that the letters "PMP" was only a tool used to segregate empoyees that were to be fired, or that were to get a pay raise. The letters following a person's name are becoming as meaningless as those before a persons name. Many people can test out and become a PMP or an MCSE but many lack the work experience. Just as I wouldn't want a doctor performing his first brain surgery on me nether do I want a PMP "leading" his first project on my "task".

Well, this is another discussion on how Project Management really is "common sense", right ? So let me ask you this : why do so many projects fail ? Best practices : it's all about not reinventing the wheel again and learn from other people's mistakes.

So let me give you a more appropriate comparison. Everyone knows how to make a scrambled egg, right ? So are we all top chefs then ? No, of course not. Managing your personal appointments and your administration is something you do every day but it's something else when managing a high-risk, visible and complex multi-million software project. that's real Project Management.

A final thing on "just enough" process. It's true that too much PM overhead is unnecessary but if you want to be a top chef you will first have to learn how to make a scrambled egg. Learn the basics first and then start making it more "lean". And that's why Project Management is a profession. (and there's more to Project Management than the PMBoK)

Paul,

That's a surprising comment coming from such an esteemed PM practitioner such as yourself. I suspect there may be a wry smile behind the comment, as you well know they would definitely trigger debate.

Project Management is indeed a profession and how one becomes involved in it is totally irrelevant, to an extent that it is a nonsense.

In Australia, our peak industry body is the Australian Institute of Project Management, which as I understand it, have on their agenda the formal placement of Project Management on the official list of professions within Australia.

In that regard one could accept an argument that Project Management is not a formal profession per se. However one can't deny the argument that it is indeed a profession, based on the following facts:
* an income can be derived from delivering project management services,
* one can operate independently within the industry,
* one has a professional body with formalised, endorsed and industry accepted standards, and
* one is required, and can, obtain professional indemnity insurance to practice in the industry.

Perhaps we should put this to a vote? Head on over to here to cast your vote in the poll, and I'll report back the results in due course.

Thank you for the comment Dr_Paul!

When I said that people accidentally stumble into project management, I meant that many start managing projects without any knowledge of the formal methodologies and literature available on the topic. The opposite of this would be someone who goes to university for a degree in project management and trains specifically for it up-front.

Your reference to accidental cardiologist or pilots is a straw man argument. Those are professions which do not relate at all to everyday life for most people. Managing projects is something everyone does in one fashion or another, and it just so happens that if you make the effort to become proficient at the soft skills and tools involved, you can become a project manager who drives business results and gets things done very, very well. Apply the same to an entrepreneur, executive, or salesperson. Would you also discount these as professions?

a: a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation b: a principal calling, vocation, or employment c: the whole body of persons engaged in a calling

Personally, I think the burden of proof is on you here. Let us know specifically why project management does not meet at least one of these definitions.

Furthermore, what are you really arguing here? That project management doesn't provide value and no one should be doing it? Or just that it doesn't fit into a definition like the one above?

Thank you for the comment, I enjoy challenges like this very much. I hope I was respectful (although candid) in my response, and I hope to hear back from you!

Josh Nankivel

Josh,
PLEASE....... How can you possibly claim that any occupational specialty that allows people to "accidently" become involved possibly be considered a profession?

Do you know of any "accidental" cardiologists? Or "accidental" commercial pilots?

I am sure this will elicit a firestorm, but despite the best of PMI's marketing efforts, there is NOTHING which substantiates any claims that project management is a profession.

BR,
Dr. PDG, Jakarta, Indonesia

I agree to a certain extent with these comments but so much of it depends on exactly what one's beliefs are. For example if someone believes that all projects must have a solid, detailed and written plan then they're not going to be able to survive long on projects that demand action and lean processes. But, on the other hand, they are going to be capable on projects that demand such planning.

All of the major project management bodies around the world today, and a lot of the new and emerging bodies, have defined what they consider to be the 'standards' for planning and managing projects. That they all state something different is one concern but, as you say, one size does not fit all so it doesn't matter which set of standards one adopts, if the 'standard' is wrong in the first place then it doesn't matter how well someone applies it. It will still be wrong.

These are all great comments! Sometimes I see a tendency for people to get very dogmatic about methodology, to the point that they may even try to make something work that just doesn't fit the project, team, company culture, etc.

All methodologies have at least some merit. I find it most interesting when you actually try to combine the best of different ones, and decide what to do in a situational implementation approach.

Very interesting post. I think this idea can apply to any job or any group work situations, not just project management. We develop our own ways of doing things and it can be difficult when working together. Anyway, good post. I also have a blog on project management - http://www.santexq.com/project-management-tool-... - check it out if you get a chance!

I totally agree with this post and the response by Dave. Too many times I see PMs concentrating on their PM 101 methodologies only to lose sight of the bigger picture of affecting the change in the parent business unit. In the end the business owner cares more about achieving the end result than the processes and methodologies that were used. As well as using the term "just enough process" we use the term "fit for purpose". Add as much PM overhead that's fit for the purpose of achieving the aim.

I've repeatedly heard a "PM catch-phrase" that makes a lot of sense. The Gartner folks use it a lot. They say you should apply "just enough process". So, not enough to slow you down - just enough to remove the typical risks that PM naturally mitigates. When you look at it that way, then you can approach "how" you add PM overhead in a much more structured way.