Projects, Leadership, Strategy
It seems ‘first principles’ is one of the newest corporate ‘buzzphrases’, popularized in large part by Elon Musk when he explained his approach with SpaceX and making privatized space travel affordable. And so because Elon said it, and we all want to sound like our ideas and approaches are ‘grounded in science’, it gets woven into conversations and presentations.
In that vein, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to identify the ‘first principles’ of project management.
(And yes, I realize I’m just perpetuating the phrase )
There’s a popular narrative going around that Project Professionals should seek to ‘be more strategic’. That they should lobby for a ‘seat at the table’. While an understandable sentiment (everyone wants to be ‘heard’, and to be seen as important), I think that *at this time*, this is not...
The more I watch conversations around project management unfold, and the more my conversations bring me into contact with practitioners with deeper experiences than me, the more convinced I am that PMI, in conjunction with IPMA, APM, etc., needs to launch (and fund) an initiative to capture, document, and explain...
I’ve been toying with an idea around, maybe not project prioritization, but project categorization, as a way to both help understand why we’re doing certain projects, and if or how they align with strategy.
It’s no secret I’m not a fan of the idea of ‘hybrid’ project management. To me, anything that falls under the category of ‘delivering an outcome’ is simply *project management*. So Agile, predictive, phased, event-based… even Design for Six Sigma, are methods of ‘project management’.
I’ve been thinking about the definition of project management for a while now. I think for many it’s been incorrectly defined, explained, or misunderstood, which has led to many of the challenges and ‘religious wars’ between Project Management and Agile.
Recently in a comment on LinkedIn regarding the Waterfall/Agile/Hybrid debate, Adrian Dooley (Praxis Framework) explained how projects live on a continuum, with Cost of Rework and Uncertainty being the two primary defining factors. I loved his explanation and wanted to add my own thoughts. To help illustrate these, I put...