December 5, 2006

Dear David,

In the December issue of PM Today Eric Jenett warned against creating "silos" in the project management world. By silos Eric means things like Specific Interest Groups (SIGs) or interest groups based on specific types of projects or industries or subjects.  He is concerned with maintaining common experiences and general knowledge. Eric has been consistent in this belief for the last 36 years. 

 

As the person responsible for starting the pharmaceutical track which led to the development of SIGs, I have always been on the other side of this issue.  I also was an initial founder of the New Product Development SIG and the International Development SIG. My point was that the conference program must show items of interest to various organizations to get bosses to approve of workers to attend.  If for example the program has nothing on electric utility outages or oil refinery shutdowns we will get no attendees or members from these type projects.

But there are ways to maintain common experiences and satisfy specific interests.  For example, the annual conferences should be organized with one day of tracks by type of project and one day by subject matter such as risk analysis, and lunches or meeting based on type of industry.  Then some experiences are common and some specific.    

Bob Youker 

PMI member #34

Bethesda, MD, USA 

 

 

 

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December 20, 2006

Dear David,

I enjoyed reading your article on The World of Project Management in the September PM World Today.  I think it is important to think through all these different dimensions or parameters. Over the years I have been very interested in what you call PM Practice and which I call types of applications or PRODUCTS of the project.  I think many people are making a mistake to categorize by industry when type of project is more important.

I presented papers on this subject at the IPMA World Congress in Florence in 1992 and at PMI’s Annual Symposium in Philadelphia in 1999, and an edited copy was placed on Max Wideman's website a couple of years ago. It would be good if you could put it on your web site now, In these papers I worked closely with Russ Archibald and Max who have both also published articles on this subject. 

My key point is that an IT project in a bank and an IT project in a construction company are similar and require similar approaches. However an IT project in a bank and a construction project to build a new bank building are very different although they are in the same industry of banking. The article includes several charts laying out different dimensions of types of projects. 

I was hoping that academics would work on trying to define these exact differences required in how to manage these different type projects.   

Bob Youker
World Bank (retired)
Bethesda, Maryland

USA

 

Download the referenced files

• Arch Flow Chart (PPT)
• "The Difference between Different Types of Projects" MS Word
• Philly Exhibit

 

 

 

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