Project Processes & Frameworks

If we want better projects, we need to be better at our project management. But is consistency and formality the answer? Is demanding adherence to a common process what is required to get to “better”? The evidence here is mixed.

There is a great deal that, on the surface of it, would appear straightforward about process improvement. Define your current state. Identify the problems with your current state. Figure out solutions to the problems. Implement the solutions. Really, how hard can this be? Actually, it can be very, very hard. A simple solution? Keep it about the improvement, stupid!

Standards play a role in defining project management. And yet there are many different standards for project management, with different terms, practices and capabilities. What does it mean to try to get to a single understanding of project management? Is it possible? And what might it look like if we got there?

The good news is that we keep innovating new project management techniques. The bad news is… that we keep innovating new project management techniques. New approaches are a response to what hasn’t worked in the past. The challenge is that in addressing problems, we throw out the baby with the bath water. And then often re-label our tepid water as ‘lukewarm’. How to rethink how we think about process, and how we improve how we manage.

Project initiation is often held to be a formal, disciplined and rational process of objectively assessing project benefits. Reality routinely demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth. Project initiation is at its heart a political process, and while project managers are not always involved at this stage, they ignore what happens here at their peril. A critical look at what it really takes to get a project off the ground.

Projects are different. People are different. And yet, in many ways, we implicitly approach project management as if it is a single, uniform, unchanging process. How we manage projects — and how we learn project management — will be heavily influenced by our own preferences. A different take on what it means to be consistent — and why that may not be the best approach.