I've stepped on toes again with a too-long winded post to Hal's web site on the conjecture that the "Theory of Project Management" is obsolete. I apologize for being a bore.
This topic hooks me for some reason. I know some of the reasons:
- It's a series of papers used by the agile community as evidence that PMBOK and by implication PMI has a flawed approach - "see this professor in another country even says so."
- It's an anecdotal report presented as a foundational principle. You can actually get a PhD these days by writing about anecdotal observations of human behavioral!
I failed to complete my PhD in physics - "All But Dissertation" is the subtitle of the Masters Degree I received. A real paying job was more important in the late 70's than being a 6 year starving grad student. Looking back, it was the right choice. Along the way I learned to code real time process control systems for the accelerator and learned about the difference between "theory" and "practice."
Project Management is a practice NOT a profession. Even if PMI wants to call it a profession. Law and Medicine are professions, with theory behind them. A Professional Structural Engineer or Professional Control Systems Engineer are professions. I was a PE Controls in California before moving to management, so I have some experience in the "Profession" of being a Professional.
So where's the hook? The Howell, et. al. papers have problems from the eye of a "science guy"
- They describe poor project management practices and associate them with obsolete theory. This is called a Type II error. Bad measurement on the wrong variables that produces a false negative. In fact it is a Type III error, the right answer to the wrong question. The question should have been "why did applying the known to work practices produce an unreliable result?" They are known to work because there are samples of them working in statistically sufficient numbers around the world.
- The anecdotal observations are too small a sample. They also do not have a control group. Several things are missing:
- With a control group and observation you could ask things about the "why" the observed projects did not result in success using the standard processes?
- Was it the process itself or the application of the process
- Since there would be examples of the process working, the larger question would have been - "why does it work some places and not others?" "If the practices don't results in reliable results, what is the cause?" Stating the theory is obsolete is done ad hoc, without examining the underlying casual factors - and eliminating them, being left with only "the theory is obsolete." This is a serious flaw in a paper claiming to be academically sound (orat least references by those adhering to the same thesis).
- What was the casual effect for it not working? That was never answered. Just skipping the conclusion.
- But reading the papers, I don't see that approach. I see a conjectured thesis and then some observations to support that thesis.
But this is irrelevant, if it were not for the use of the papers but others to further their points - that PMI and PMBOK are obsolete.
That's all. That's my heart burn about how Agile Project Management is portrayed. Agile is a proposed alternative to bad project management practices.
