The PMI in 2008 finished overhauling its  four standards (PMBOK, Program, Portfolio, and OPM3).  I took the key thrusts, and referred to the 2002 Koskela and Howell critique for context.  Below are the five positive standouts:

1. Candor on the need for continuing work to make PMI-BOK more relevant and actually used.
2. Five-point criteria : time, scope, cost, and risk and resources.
3. Coordinating the PMI documents in dictating and certifying pm practice.
4. Recognizing that the world is chaotic and nonlinear,
the sections on Change management have been integrated; and,
5. An exhortation that the Scheduler and tools be more “practical and judicious” in order to be flexibly responsive to dynamic situations.

OK; here’s three unsolved problem areas. The PMI-BOK

1. Needs to emphasize that Issues include “soft” and unquantifiable events.  Processes and tools must systematically capture and make visible non-scheduling issues as well.
2. Needs to move away from command-and-control, and emphasize collaboration and motivation. Execution is more than “dispatching”.  PM should be part of a manager’s skillset, not a staff specialization.  Lastly, the term “control” itself easily creates an illusion of certainty about the future.
3. Needs to dismantle a structural emphasis on scheduling. Certainly, time does eventually trump everything in the end. But the solution is not in creating complex schedules. As a writer reminds us, schedules are really “just a summary statement of our best-guess objectives”, given the inherently significant degree of inaccuracy about the future. Acknowledge the uncertainty; then (1) put in place the mechanisms to make changes visible, and (2) facilitate adjustments and feedback loops.

Mere theoretical abstractions? Unfortunately, no. How many people think to question parallel issues with Microsoft Project®, the de facto standard pm tool: (a) its very complexity has made pm into a priesthood isolated from day-to-day management; and (b) it has no inherent mechanism to handle non-scheduling issues (…those messy political and people trivialities).

(In the next blog: more on why schedule as a certainty is mathematically and logically flawed, if project management is to be practical and practicable.  Plus a mindmap parsing of the Koskela critique.)

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This entry was posted Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Project Management. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.