State of the Art of Project Management
January 16th, 2004 by HalPM Forum published the The first of Russell D. Archibald's a three part evaluation of the State of the Art of Project Management (2003). There's too much for me to digest on a first read. My impression is Archibald has done a good job covering the topics, exploring the issues, and calling attention to others' contributions.
One of the encouraging trends is the evolvement of the project management maturity models. Now some of you may be asking, "Has Hal done a 180° on this?" I have not been impressed with how companies are using SEI's CMMI approach. It reminds me of the ISO 9000 craze in manufacturing back in the early '90s. It had the effect of producing middling performance and bureaucracy. My view on projects is different. I think we need some common standards for assessing how well you are learning. I don't endorse assessing against company-prescribed methods and procedures. As Archibald so aptly states in the title project management is an art. Projects are about the creative acts of many. Let's focus our attention on making us much more effective at that.
At the very end of this first part Archibald seems to endorse assigning Chief Projects Officers (CPO) to manage the Project Management Office (PMO) and the portfolio(s) of projects. He may only be reporting the proposal by Bigelow; I can't tell. I somewhat skeptical about this even in large project organizations like defense contractors. We've seen companies create one CxO position after another over the last 20 years. (I know an executive with the title of Chief Inspiration Officer (CIO) Anyone else confused?)
I will read Archibald's assessment again and write again about it. In the meantime, have a look for yourself.
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January 19th, 2004 at 5:40 pm
PM is not an art or a science. In a business setting it’s an attempt to instill some needed discipline. Coherence, improved communication and commitment are all needed but not just within a PM context — they are needed in business generally as well. What’s wrong in Project Management is pretty much what’s wrong in business organizations generally.
January 19th, 2004 at 11:28 pm
One use of a taxonomy of projects would be in picking generic process models to use in project planning. Of course there would need to be a good set of models associated with the taxonomy.
January 21st, 2004 at 6:30 pm
Glen,
I believe the reason so many good frameworks and methods don’t work is very often due to lack of discipline. For example, many teams start with a good plan but forget not only to keep it up to date as changes occur but they also forget what they agreed to do.
I like Hal’s focus on commitment. Teams need to be commited to using the plans, methods and techniques they sign up for.
David Schmaltz has advice about getting people to sign up — and some of that advice is good as well.
In my experience there are lots of ways to manage work. The reason more of them don’t work has more to do with execution and culture than flaws inherent on the work management methods, at least as often as not.
Frank
January 21st, 2004 at 11:59 pm
Frank,
There are some papers around on the failure of integration systems frameworks. I’ll try to track them down in Siteseeker and ACM DL.
January 22nd, 2004 at 3:23 am
Ok. I’d like to see ‘em. But most failure is execution and I’ll bet most of these are no different.
January 22nd, 2004 at 2:00 pm
Hi Hal — yes this has been useful, thank you
Can’t follow a plan created yesterday? That’s strange, I’ve seen it done many times.. They also recorded the change that occurred daily as well.
I’d like to see PMs add the techniques of commitment and coherence to their practice….but wait — I’ve seen both attributes as part of project practice many times as well.
I guess I just don’t get it! Or maybe I haven’t seen enough really poor projects (I have seen plenty, actually) Anyway, maybe David will teach me the new religion today!
Cheers,
Frank