17.12.2011 - 'Worrying trends' - a rant in 2010
Worrying trends
A further take on the issue of professionalism in project management
There is a worrying trend in the project management world. People are inventing new methods!
It seems everywhere you turn now there is an organisation that has come up with a new approach which will solve all your problems, and avoid all of the (otherwise insurmountable) problems of 'traditional' project management. Thank heavens!
I have a personal concern about this however. Perhaps a minor worry, but an issue which I can't shake off. Whether it is critical this or agile that I can't find much that is new in these methods. In fact I am not convinced they are new methods at all. I go to seminars, presentations, stands at conferences. I am hungry for knowledge in these new and exciting - potentially revolutionary - approaches. But, like the cliché about Chinese food, after the initial exciting taste, I invariably go away unsatisfied, hungry.
The fact is I think there is nothing wrong with traditional approaches to project management. I think they work very well, and they have served me well for nearly a decade and a half. So I am not motivated by dissatisfaction, but I am always hungry for new knowledge, new ways to improve.
And here is the problem. At these presentations I always seem to hear criticism of traditional 'waterfall' scheduling methods, and restrictive approaches to change control (even the suggestion that traditional methods cannot cope with change at all). And supposedly innovative ideas about estimating, resource allocation, communications, etc., none of which seems to be new to me. Most worrying of all, the impression I get from some presenters is that they have not studied traditional project management at all, but merely inherited some prejudices about it. From people who were not very good at it.
Therefore what we end up with is a group of people who do not know much about a subject, trying to sell new approaches to solve problems that aren't there. Their attitude fails logical analysis. If I were to say; 'Look at that person, they must be a bad driver because they have just had an accident. Their second in a week. The driving school that trained them has let them down. Therefore the driving schools that we have used in the past must have let all of us down. So we need to find a new way to learn to drive. Please attend my seminar on "Better, safer driving.."..' you would not be convinced. You would not buy. So why do we get sold to in this way in the project management profession?
I used the word 'profession'. I believe project management is a profession, and I am fully behind APM efforts to achieve charter status to help reinforce this fact. But if we are a profession, why are we acting like a bunch of 'alternative practitioners', or allowing others in our midst to do that? If you studied the APM body of knowledge, or the PMI BoK, and attended training courses covering this material, and if you paid close attention to your mentor in your 'apprentice' years, you will have learned a vast amount about project management. If you studied Prince2, and/or one of the many, hugely impressive corporate methods out there, you will have learned how to turn theory to practice. And over time you will have become a very, very good project manager, consistently delighting your stakeholders with your results. All from traditional materials. No alternative methods necessary.
So why have the alternative practitioners emerged? I think part of the answer lies in confusion between methods and techniques. It is time for me to make a confession. I think there maybe something to Agile. Not as a method, but as a helpful technique to employ within the application of a traditional project management method. I will return to this issue shortly.
But first I must get something else off my chest. For years now I, and many others, have been fighting a battle with Prince2 training providers. And some have seen the light. The battle has concerned;
v Taking people onto method training without insisting on them taking project management training first (Prince2 training, if it does anything, teaches you about the Prince2 method, but not about project management). So my recommendation is to take an APM or PMI qualification before taking Prince2, then you will have fighting chance of understanding and therefore being able to implement successfully Prince2 on your project.
v And “why-oh-why” must we persevere with the dreadful 5-day crammer format, which allows for no explanation, no attempt at understanding, no discussion.
The result has been wave after wave of people (often public sector) attending Prince2 training and obtaining qualifications, and then returning to the office not understanding the project management skillset and failing to successfully deliver projects. We know this. They consistently complain about it. But the tide is turning, some trainers are alive to the issues. So are enlightened employers. We are finding that increasing numbers of people are adopting the combination approach of, say, APMP with Prince2, which must be good. So why tell this tale now? Well I think the project management profession is now dragging itself back from a difficult position over Prince2, a position that risked making it look not very professional at all. I think it may well be that the profession needs to similarly pull itself back from difficulties with the plethora of alternative practitioners. This does not mean rejecting them in every case. It may mean engaging with them. But on a different level.
I return to Agile. Where I am persuaded that Agile is onto something is in the area of creative development. That's why its focus, its genesis, has been in software development. Techniques such as scrums and sprints, which allow for iterative development cycles, provide a solution to a problem not well handled by traditional approaches, and are valuable. But that is the key point: they are techniques. APM BoK should incorporate them, bring them into the mainstream. Stop people talking about a ‘new approach‘ to project management.
I have found that if one attends Agile presentations there is a tendency for the presenter to; a) seek to style Agile as ”‘the next big thing”, and ‘traditional’ project management as woefully inadequate, and b) then reiterate lots of project management orthodoxies seemingly not adopted by those people attracted to the Agile approach. Such presenters may be knowledgeable and experienced project managers and, I suspect, provided an extremely valuable service to people who may have learned the 'Agile method'. But the impression is that the Agile community have unfortunately by-passed traditional project management training, so they need to learn some project management golden rules. A number of recent experiences have got me thinking; have we got ourselves into another 'Prince2 trap'? Do we now have people out there saying "..traditional project management is dead, Agile [say] is the new way. All I need is some Agile training and I'll be away..". More bad logic. More problems being stored up for the project management profession. Another issue to untangle.
I think there is a metaphor here with regard to the development of science. Most scientific development is incremental in nature. It does not throw away what went before it, but rather develops it, builds on it. Not all scientists are Newtonian ‘paradigm-shifters’. So it is with the project management profession.
So to conclude. Project management is a professional activity and project managers deserve to be treated as professionals. To achieve this they need to behave in a professional way. And this involves;
Ø Respecting the body of knowledge, and acting in accordance with it
Ø Contributing to its development, where necessary, and
Ø Not putting personal/commercial advantage above dedication to the profession.
If we all do these things, and help encourage others to adhere to them (say, at project management events), we will really start to look like a profession. As we should.
John Rowley
Director, TPM
John.rowley@tpm-projects.co.uk
Tel: 020 8144 3391
|
