Comments on: How Do You Define Project Management To Your Friends?

By: gsempe

gsempe — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:38:14 +0000

And why not:
I’m the member of a team as Phil Jackson was a member of Chicago Bulls.

By: Steven Mulhall

Steven Mulhall — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:27:46 +0000

My (and most people’s friends) are not in employment in the Project space and so do not know the PM venacular.

I prefer to tell them I manage a business idea and the resources required to get that idea “done” from start to finish in a short set period of time….

By: Josh Nankivel

Josh Nankivel — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:42:16 +0000

Absolutely! That’s a critical element I don’t think we’ve discussed on this post yet.

As a PM, I see one of my key responsibilities to be removing impediments from my project team’s path!

I like the translation aspect as well, that’s one of the key things that got me into PM; the affinity for talking tech to developers and business-speak to external stakeholders.

Great input!

By: Max Cameron

Max Cameron — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:35:50 +0000

Thanks for your email Josh, here’s another definition I thought of:

Project Management is the art of protecting the project producers from the forces which seek to distract them.

Alternate:

Project Management is the art of translating between two languages: that of the producers and that of the stake-holders.

By: Josh Nankivel

Josh Nankivel — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:45:19 +0000

Good point Shim, but I don’t mind the diversity of interpretations.

PMI was trying to do this in 140 characters, but my question was actually this:

“How do you define “project management” in a way that inspires others to learn more about this important discipline?”

And then I confused things by having a slightly different question in the title to try and make it snazzy:

How Do You Define Project Management To Your Friends?”

I did this on purpose. I figured some would answer one or the other and I could review and compile our collective thoughts into a revision of my prototype definition.

It’s actually a happy addition that other interpretations came out like the PMI’s 140 character one or the formal definition view. The more ideas, the merrier!