Got Some Project Software to Sell? Pay Attention…

Ready for a little entertainment today? I'll try to be unconditionally constructive. Please forgive me if I fail to pull it off. Let's look at the white paper Refining the Project Planning Process by Bernard Ertl.

This "white paper" was delivered via an email newsletter. Even I'm awake enough to recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing. The white paper is just a marketing piece for eTaskMaker™. Maybe even a well-written marketing piece.

I've identified by inference these suppositions in the paper and "supporting quotes" (You might want to read the paper to draw your own inferences.):

• Planning is a distinct and separate phase from execution.
  "…project planning enables project managers to derive useful information for making decisions."
• Concerns for efficiency have us assign specialist roles of "planners" rather than use those people who are responsible for performing the work.
  "Given sufficient time, experienced personnel can produce the highest quality plans with the manual planning process."
• Planning is an analytical process.
  "Planners analyze each logical work element by defining the necessary steps (tasks), estimating their duration and resource requirements and laying out a logic network for sequencing"
• New and inexperienced planners can use software to produce good plans.
  "Since estimating formulas and schedule logic are captured within the estimating modules, there will be no drop-off in quality when new or inexperienced planners arrive on the job."

C'mon! We know this is not so. These guys are trying to sell project planning software. How about speaking about practices that improve project planning?

Projects are human endeavors. They might also be engineering endeavors, construction endeavors, or events. But first, projects are about people working together to fulfill some shared intention or promise. Planning is effective when conducted as a conversation among interested people who will carry out the plan. Since we cannot know the future, the planning conversation is a kind of dress-rehearsal for project participants to orient themselves to the future. Assigning planning to specialist non-performers misses the opportunity of walking through the project as a performer. The walk-thru in conversation also provides the opportunity to (re)shape the plan. The group learns as it plans. Planning conversations continue through execution as participants continue to learn, adjust, and discover.

I know that the author didn't say the tools couldn't be used the way I describe. And, I'm sure there's a legitimate benefit to using templates…even dynamic ones. If you want to sell to me, then keep the emphasis on: supporting the planning conversation, scenario (what if) planning, planning in the midst of execution, and learning from one group to another. Please…no more talk of efficiency.

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