Not-So-Secret Dirty Little Project Management Secret
November 15th, 2004 by HalIn today's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) technology columnist Lee Gomes claims that we won't be seeing another tech investment boom for at least five years. He offers the following as explanation:
"One of the not-so-secret Dirty Little Secrets of the tech world is that no one knows how to make this stuff work. When Hewlett-Packard, which is in the business of telling other companies how to make this stuff work, turned in a disappointing quarter in August, it placed much of the blame on a badly flubbed in-house effort to computerize its own operations."
Lee Gomes, When Pundits Predict Tech's Future, 11-15-04
How can this be? Lee Gomes has it part right. But it's not tech know-how that is the problem. As Larry Bossidy has said it comes down to execution. Not execution of the technology issues; it comes down to the way we do projects.
Competitiveness today depends on doing projects well, both those projects for customers and the internal projects that launch new products and add capability. When will we wake up? We are in the project age. The information age and the continuing stream of new innovations only amplifies the requirement of doing projects well.
Sure there's a not-so-secret Dirty Little Secret. In spite of the best efforts of well-intentioned professionals we get one project disappointment after another. Accepted wisdom and current practice of project management is to blame. It's time to abandon obsolete project management theory and practice embracing agile, eXtreme, and lean project delivery in its place.
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