Project Management Is Dead
I am sorry to inform you but Project Management as we know it is dead. Plan-driven approaches are dead. Agile will be dead before it hits the masses. You have no idea how I hate this fact. It makes me sad. Heck, it makes me mad!
Come to think of it, I wonder if it ever was alive. The fact that it seemed to work in the past is no guarantee that it ever was the proper way to do projects. It was not if we had evolution in the field. We didnt start out with a gazillion ways to do things and in the end only a few survived because they were the best. There is no comparison, so who knows.
Why the fuzz now all of a sudden?
As a Project Manager I am now more than ever faced with the fact that part of my teams are at the other end of the world. Different cultures, different time zones, different languages, different customs. Different. Worse? Nope. They are very good, very skilled. I would even say excellent. But I hardly see them, let alone know them.
The part of the team (and stakeholders) located in my country is always on the move. They are multitasking beyond compare. It is rare if someone is dedicated fulltime to one project. For most of them I dont have fulltime tasks. I need more and more different specializations for every new project I take on. More people doing more fragmented tasks. Being mobile. And being spread all over the globe.
Personally I see a trend towards ever increasing complexity in the software projects. Resulting in more people to manage. I also see a trend towards an enormous amount of simple projects caused by the ever increasing automation of small and mid-sized companies using out-of-the-box or hosted applications. Resulting in more projects per Project Manager, meaning more people to manage .
I am not complaining about geographical changes, mobility, flexible workforces or any of the aspects I mentioned above. I am complaining about the tools to my disposal to bring it all to a good end. Agile brought us the much needed attention for the human element of teams. It also brought us a sense that there can be something else than plan-driven. But I honestly cannot see how it will help us in the situation that lies before us.
Yes, all approaches have good elements. I am not looking for good elements though. I am looking for a proper whole. One that is based upon the fact that projects are nothing more than humans working together. One that can deal with the funkiness that humans possess.
I am looking for a true Project Management Body Of Knowledge, one that is based on psychology, sociology, organizational behavior, complex adaptive systems, and whatever might help us out.
If you have that PDF on your hard drive, please mail it to me. I need it.
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Bas de Baar, blogging as "The Project Shrink", is taking his message to the International Project Management community with a vengeance: "Projects Are About Humans. Now Deal With That!" ... 
Controversial title, but ground you describe is true. Project management is ever-morphing discipline. It was, it is and it will be. One thing is geographical challenges which are brought recently. Another is constant search for the best methods to put it all together in a predictable manner. Growing complexity and number of projects are also on the list.
Yes, in a decade from now project management will look different from what we see now, but it won't be dead. We'll adjust the process to the new environment, like we always do.
And to answer your need - I believe you look in the wrong place. I think there's no project management process which will help us sort the situation out. The answer lays in tools which will help to deal with communication among people spread all over the world. Think, teleconferencing tools are still very poor quality or very expensive (and even then, they aren't very mobile). Our collaboration still relies on emails which aren't always the best way of contact. Internet enabled spreading teams geographically but tools which would cover holes brought by the model are yet to appear. In my opinion that is the answer.
True. But there must be some underlying model, process or whatever. The tools must be based upon some assumptions. There must be some explanations on why tools will work or not.
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Technology and Project Management -
Project Mgmt as we know it…will be completely different than in the 1900's. Each person will become a project manager, but won't call him/herself that. Technology will be the backend of each and every business, that uses technology. Sociology will be the human interaction through this medium, to not conquer the world, but to embrace the peoples of the world and bring them into fruitful living situations where they can succeed in life by being helped, encouraged, taught, nurtured.
Technology, and the people running it, will have to learn compassion, and we all will have to work together, so we will each be managing ourselves, rather than projects. If I gave you the tools, you would be picking my brain, and quite frankly, you will be developing the tools yourselves through the much less complicated apps that come forward in the next few decades (yes, that long).
Besides, my brain is filled with many ideas, I'm a writer, and prefer to bring together people with ideas.
You will be the backbone of the future, the tools will be ones you create, develop, harness and bring into being, as expressions of function. You are all of you working together, learning, doing, being.
There's more, but rather than go religious on everyone, study who was most compassionate on the earth, how they accomplished this compassion by being and walking among the people, and study what they said and apply that to technology, your life, and the world. Then dominion becomes not a negative word, and not control, but a working together of all forces and lives to create peace, joy, love, harmony, and more life.
Okay, so this seems like a tangent, where is the Project Management truths you are seeking…well, look to the greatest Project Manager of all, and it will all become clear!
Where will technology be in the next few decades? Will we create Artificial Life (AI) via these computers we use daily? Hmmm….
Seems I am answering a question with a question. Again.
As to ever-increasing complexity in the technological tools we use, I see a trend the opposite way. The tools themselves will become standardized, but there will be several standards, different ops, different back-ends, different front-ends, different apps. Each group of folks working together will have to agree on those apps working together also, so that will be where the complexity comes in managing the people to the apps.
And I really hate to give it away, what I see, but database management and apps that tie into those databases are going to be crucial in the manipulation of technological data in the future. Simplify it, do the databases as spreadsheets if you can and get better software to tie spreadsheets into databases and websites…there has got to be better software for this written (okay, enough of my complaint, uh, suggestion).
Don't let it overwhelm you (nor I), it's one line of code at a time, one web page at a time, one website at a time, one person at a time.
Oh, wait, with conference calls that's not true anymore, but we still have what is known as the "talking stick" approach to communication - only one person can be heard at a time, therefore only one person has the talking stick at a time. But with so many brains thinking about what is being said, it is taking more self-control to formulate ideas into work, into existence.
That is where Project Management is headed, yet that appears to be glorious, as we learn more, do more, and are more, for and with each other.
Ciao,
Suzanne Belle Lowry
Anacortes, WA USA
(New website coming soon, just got married, name change changes everything!)
Copyright 2007 Suzanne Belle Lowry
Good post. Managing projects I feel like driving a car faster and faster every day. Better tools, faster cycles. But the person using the tools -driving the car- can crash the project just like crashing a car. Is the Project Manager fault? Yes and no, since tools let you go faster and… safer? Inertia is bigger and the time to respond to events shorter. May be we are reaching the limits of the people supercharging them with wonderful technology and tools…
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Before you define the new project management let me know what a project is.
Things that are projects today willbecome operational in the future (eg minor-medium enahcements to systems)and things that are operational management areas will become projectised (e.g. the new marketing campaign.)
At the same time programme management is developing s a discipline. This is the art of not just managing a series of related projects but of managing the whole sphere of activties that are taking your business from where it is today to where it needs to be in the future.
While the world economy and sociology continue to change there ill be a continuing growth of project management.
Lastly; where is the sociology in all this? You are right; it's ben lft off the list. Possibly on purpose.
The technical aspects of project management aer there as the toolkit. The people side of project management may just be "management" and for that you need to go to the management theorists and practitioners and see how to best organise, motivate and reward your teams.
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