On the subject of Russ Archibald’s Guest Editorial & The Future of Project Management

7 October 2009

Dear Editor:

Russ Archibald writes an interesting review of the "Origins of Modern Project Management". It is good to know that the "old boy" is still going strong! His article is important because, as the old saying goes, "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it". A saying that if Googled on the Internet reveals some interesting pages, not least of which is this one: http://www.before-you-vote-2008.info/ARGENTINA.html.

But I digress. In looking to the future under the heading "Strategic Versus Operational Project Management", Russ suggests that:

"Strategic project management includes these seven important processes and related responsibilities, which actually comprise the essence of project/program portfolio management:

1. Select and authorize new projects and programs to be added to the appropriate, currently active project portfolios within the organization.
2. Validate that each selected and authorized project and program properly supports the currently approved strategic objectives of the organization.
3. Prioritize all validated projects and programs within each established project portfolio to facilitate proper allocation of money and other key resources between these "portfolio components."
4. Allocate key resources (money, skilled people, equipment, facilities, other) to each portfolio and each project and program therein.
5. Establish the master schedule for each project portfolio reflecting the strategically approved priorities and allocation of money and other key resources to each project and program.
6. Monitor, evaluate, report, and control progress on each program and project within each portfolio, as specified in the organization's PM policies and procedures.
7. Cancel or change the scope, schedule, end result, and cost of approved projects and programs when such actions are required or justified.

Of these seven, only Items 5 and 6 are properly within the usual domain of the project management discipline. The other five are strategic management responsibilities, and are not normally within the responsibility of a typical Project Management Office, with some exceptions.[23]"

I agree entirely. However, in my view, Russ does not go far enough, because his series of processes that represents a system is not complete or closed. I suggest that the following three further processes must be added, namely:

8. Transfer of the product of the project(s) into the 'care, custody and control' of the users, aka Operations Management, for beneficial deployment.

9. Collection of actual benefit data from that deployment

10. Feedback of that data such that 'continuous improvement' of the original identification and selection of projects can be maintained and focused.

Of course, in practice, this is easier said than done, not least because we have not yet identified suitable tools and techniques for these processes, nor have we identified who should be responsible. However, it is pleasing to learn that there are companies that are making headway in this direction. But perhaps the biggest challenge is not the finding of "tools and techniques" but crossing that great cultural divide, aka attitude, between Project Management and Operations Management.

And this, I suspect, requires a quantum leap at the "Strategic Management level", aka Executive management. That will no doubt take the next generation of senior managers.

At the "project management level" there is another dimension that I sincerely hope will be grasped within the next five years. And that is, the distinction between managing the project and managing the technology. While completely inseparable on any given project, nevertheless they need to be treated separately in terms of understanding. They need different expertise and different methodologies - the former overlaying the latter. Only in this way will we be able to get across the fact that project life span methodologies need to be, and indeed are, similar across all types of project in a project portfolio. This is necessary for purposes of governance, while the technology methodology must be specific to the type of work involved in creating the product. I first wrote about this no less than five years ago (A Management Framework for project, Program and Portfolio Integration, p viii)

Check with me in five years to see how well the discipline of project management is really progressing.

R. Max Wideman , FPMI
Vancouver, BC, Canada
http://www.maxwideman.com

Response from Russ Archibald

Dear Editor,

Thanks to my esteemed colleague and good friend Max Wideman for his useful additions to and cogent comments on my guest editorial and on the future direction of program and project management. Max's additional processes (8, 9, and 10) to my list of 7 are valid and important to assure that project results are fully integrated into the ongoing operations of the organization. In the project category of "physical facilities" these processes are generally included in the "commissioning" or "handover" phase of the project, but in other project categories these handover processes are not as well understood or defined, so I fully accept Max's point that they should be emphasized, as he has done.

Max's other major point -- that we need better understanding of the differences between managing the project and managing the technology -- is very well taken. I just explored MIT's on-line listing of all of their courses, including the Sloan School of Management there (all of their course materials are openly available on-line at no cost) and could not find any courses listed on program or project management! (Maybe I need to search more carefully!) There are many courses on managing specific technologies, however. In spite of so many other universities around the world offering degrees in program and project management, apparently not at MIT! Since MIT stands for Massachusetts Institute of Technology I suppose their emphasis on technology is to be expected, but one would expect that the Sloab School of Management would be recognizing our field of program and project management by now and presenting a few courses -- if not degrees -- in our cherished field.

I fully expect to be around for at least another 5 years, so let's revisit some of these points together in 2014!

Russ Archibald
San Miguel de Allende
Mexico

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