Project Management Is Dead

a blog >> 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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