What Is Project Management?
September 15th, 2005 by David Green
've been looking lately at the PMBoK®. In our work here in the New South Wales Department of Commerce we have a model of projects according to 7 parameters and I'm getting
someone to 'map' the PMBoK 9 areas of knowledge to our 7 'key success factors'.
Project management models neglect the fact that projects are humanistic endeavors: done by and for people, and thus are constrained primarily socially.
Our 7 are: service delivery (being that we're in public administration), affordability, sustainability, governance, risk, change (the change the project will bring about) and stakeholders (related to 'change').
I've taken a look at other models of project management recently and am coming to the conclusion that the (mechanistic) models are generally flawed because they concentrate not on the project, but on 'project management' as though this activity of bringing projects to fruition has an independent importance. They also neglect the fact, in my view, that projects are humanistic endeavors: done by and for people, and thus are constrained primarily socially.
I looked at Max Wideman's website where he summarises the state of project management in the 90s writing about how its expanded since the 70s:
"… Conceivably (project management) could still be expanded further by such potential additions as stakeholder management, cash flow management, data management, document storage and retrieval management, management of cultural differences, and even vocabulary management … With a little imagination, and research reading, one could add several more, such as critical chain buffer management,[27] customer relations management, issues management, public relations management, and even knowledge management[28] itself — the list seems almost endless."
Not only is this an example of thinking that seems to be more Fayol than Flores (or even more Fayol than Ford!), but it misses the point of what PM is. It's surprising that PM in traditional thinking gets hooked up on the secondary game, and simply seems to take to itself more and more descriptors which are about the project manager more than the project.
[As I write this I also am calling to mind what Mintzberg writes about management proper. Management as I understand his analysis is about facilitating productive relationships. That entails a heap of 'managements' of course (of finance, people, stakeholders, change, training, meetings, etc) but that's the fundamental organisational responsibility of a manager. refer, e.g. Mintzberg, H, The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact, HBR March-April 1990 p163ff]
You could go on forever saying that project management includes [something] management, but that would achieve nothing more than statements of the bleedin' obvious and not be of any great help.
It helps me to think of project management as being about three things:
- defining the outcome that is to be achieved (finished product, organisational change, etc by a certain time for a certain cost: quality of performance is implied in the basic requirement),
- facilitating activity to effect the outcome (getting the right people, resources and knowledge to work in an effective co-operative sequence), and
- taking steps to avoid or prevent harms to the outcome (ie risk, change and stakeholder management, and developing metrics to forewarn of potential problems to allow corrective action to be taken).
It goes almost without saying that the project manager role is to achieve the identified outcome with the minimum expenditure of resources and within the minimum time possible. Any trade-offs which have to be managed must be done so to maximise the 'outcome position' agreed by the 'community of intention' (the project team and its stakeholders) for the benefit of the 'community of interest' (the project recipients, users or customers).
It is merely trivial to say that this entails 'time management', 'communication management', 'issues management' or any other particular 'management', because the project manager is looked upon to do what ever is required to effect the outcome, administering and managing the project as appropriate; and that's the main demand upon the project manager. The project management models are strong on the administration and management minutiae, I think, without providing a theoretical or practical core value for project management.
Project management is facilitation of communities of productive intent to achieve desired outcomes.
As a corroborating illustration, a production manager in a factory doesn't define his/her role as a whole bunch of 'managements' to effect production, but as doing that which is necessary to effect production. Project management can be seen, I think, as production management where the purpose is one product which is somewhat individually characterised with respect to the relationships it affords with its 'community of interest' (those who will be affected by the project) and those it requires of its 'community of intention' (that is those doing the project, those who are its 'owners' and those who are its 'customers'). To be less abstract, compare a building to a toaster, or a public policy innovation to buying photocopier paper.
Like general management, project management is facilitation of communities of productive intent to achieve desired outcomes. With 'projects' noted as being more customised than routinised, relying on a temporary community for their realisation rather than an established or semi-permanent one.
But on the other hand, most projects have similarity with other projects. When I worked as an architect (registered), I did every project more or less the same: talked to the client, analysed needs, produced a 'brief', did a design, documented it, got approvals, estimated it, called tenders, and administered the contract. It was more like production management with the 'box' we produced changed to meet customer needs. The production system itself was almost identical each time.
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September 16th, 2005 at 6:51 am
Having seen my post, kindly care of Hal, I thought I should enlarge on a couple of points.
A]
I think of my terms ‘community of intention’ and ‘community of interest’. I’ll discuss these more fully in a separate offering to Hal, but I use the term ‘community’ because my observations about project ‘do-ers’ and ‘do-ees’ (those who have projects done to them) are that they are, as groups, like communities.
1. there is a degree of shared objectives;
2. some people align themselves with a large proportion of the ’shared’ objectives, others align themselves with but a few;
3. there are community thought leaders and followers; doers and thinkers, to varying degrees: the PM is perhaps the main thought leader, or should create the safe ground for true thought leaders to do and communicate their thinking;
3. the group is in continual flux, relates in socio-emotional terms, gains some identity and practical sustainance from the community and trades ’social power’ with other.
The added complexity in projects is that the two communities that I think are there for discussion overlap. The ‘community of intention’ (the project team, but broadly defined) has member who are in the ‘community of interest’ or the customers, affected parties, customers, etc.
B]
I think that my 7 project factors align with the three basic functions of the PM thus:
1. service delivery = what the project is to achieve;
2. affordability, sustainability and governance roughly align with ‘getting the project done;
3. risk, change (to the stakeholder world) and stakeholder factors roughly align with those matters the PM must manage to prevent frustrating no. 1 or diabling no. 2.
September 16th, 2005 at 6:58 am
David - Thanks for this. Max Wideman was the one who first pointed me to Fayol - perhaps 6 years ago in a discussion about project management. I was beginning to explore Flores’ work. Max said he thought it interesting but that it contradicted Fayol. 30 seconds later on google and there it was - the seed corn of project current project management. Your note connects back to that discussion and brings a new insight to where PM going astray. Regards, GAH
September 16th, 2005 at 7:46 am
David -
Nice article. I especially like the shifts from management to facilitation — how to use one’s self within the cultures, relationships, and outcome expectations to encourage the outcomes to be realized; and from stakeholder to community (whoever can effect and can be effected by the project).
I also like how you self reflect on your own patterns of practice in architectural projects. Fundamental to developing a personal practice — call it facilitative or managerial — is understanding one’s own patterns. The trap that looms, and that many have fallen into, is to project one’s own patterns as THE right way for others to approach the work. It may indeed just be the right way for you! Or at least the most usual way for you.
I look forward to your further writings.
September 16th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
David - Your comments are in my experience and research absolutely spot on, with a slight area of difference. I agree that the practice of project management and the function of a project manager are two different things, although the concept (but not the practice) of both is very linear and mechanistic. But my research has found that successful project managers (by any definition) are those whose capability is not in adopting methodologies and accepted theoris but of applying whichever methodology is appropriate at any given time and then harnessing constant transformation (change that is also changed by its own appearance) within the project environment in order to pattern his/her behaviour, and that of others, towards emergent outcomes. In simple terms, the effective project managers are those who can use whatever tools they’ve got to constantly move the project forward towards whatever outcome emerges, whether it be the objective that was evident at the start or one that became moulded and shaped by the application of these tools (thinking here of IT projects) and/or feedback from own experience, that of team, and changing needs of clients.
Go back to any time before PMBOKs and competency standards and you’ll find that the most successful project managers were applying an approach that was actually more like the theories of Baldwin and Lamarkian than Fayol and Taylor. Our problem is that throughout the 90s we’ve tried to convince them that we can capture their free will and innovativeness in a single model that others can use.
Phil Rutherford
Assessment and Certifications Manager
AIPM
September 19th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
David — I enjoyed your article. I agree that it is important for us to step back from time to time and think about what are we really trying to accomplish. Your “three things” that project management is about is a nice summary.
I agree that we should keep the focus on the outcomes, not on the project management process itself. That said, some of the tools give us a method to brainstorm or organize ourselves to define the outcome, facilitate the activity, and prevent harm to the outcome.
Thanks for sharing!
October 6th, 2005 at 4:18 am
David,
Your article is well written and, as others have said, a nice summary. Reading between the lines your main premise seems to be this: ” we project managers should stop worrying about theoretical, and ever more refined, naming conventions which try to describe what we do and get back to basics - its not rocket science”.
Your article certainly has a well worded mission statement for the project manager on what we do. Unfortunately it offers no way to answer the crucial question how should we do it and how should we improve upon the ways we do it. To comment on “how” rather than “what” we need to go to the next level down and that will require some further categorisation of your 3 point summary and inevitably lead to “managements”. I fully endorse the point that what we choose to call an area of work or expertise is far less important than finding ways to get that job done more effectively but we could not have a debate on how to do something unless we first name and define it (at least in terms of setting the scope for discussion).
So I would say that catagorising, naming and defining areas of expertise facillitates debates and exchanges of techniques and tools in that area. I think this is useful and adds value to our profession. What adds little value is endless discussion and debate about what the precise names for areas should be. I would take issue with many of the PMI and APM naming conventions but I am willing to adopt them as a vocabulary for getting to the good stuff which helps me answer the question “what is the best way to achieve…”.
Thanks for the post.