The notion that Project Management 2.0, based on Web 2.0, is one of those marketing hype approaches to selling a product, where you start with an unsubstantiated statement about PM 1.0. The book Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essesence of Management, should be read by anyone serious about deciphering this approach to solving the project management problem
Those who participate in PM 1.0 process have no moral motivation is my favorite.
Ignoring the fact that such a statement is utter bullshit, let's look at a larger problem with any 2.X approach.
People’s tendency to become more extreme after speaking with like-minded others has become known as “group polarization,” and it has been documented in dozens of other experiments. In one, feminists who spoke with other feminists became more adamant in their feminism. In a second, opponents of same-sex marriage became even more opposed to the idea, while proponents shifted further in favor. In a third, doves who were grouped with other doves became more dovish still.
Is a comment from Elizabeth Kolbert in her review of Cass Sunstein's book, On Rumors': How Falsehoods Spread. The falsehood I'll start with are the statements about PM 1.0. The conjecture of this approach is PM 1.0 is:
- Inflexible
- Bureaucratic
- Over controlled
- An Imposed process
- Possess no moral motivation
Of course the PM 2.0 proponents fail to mention that their experiences that resulted in these observations usually come from BAD Project Management. No credible project manager or project management method would in inflexible, bureaucratic, over controlling, imposed from the top down. And most certainty any credible project management method would possess the motivations needed to successfully complete the project on time, on budget and on specification. To do otherwise would mean project failure.
This does not mean it doesn't happen. But the familiar phrase "doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this..." is the best starting point for the nonsensical approach to fixing bad management with more bad management
Core PM Processes
The notion that PM 2.0 is "project management" ignores the core understanding of what project managers do when they are managing projects. Brian Kennemer makes the comment here:
Tools and processes are great things and they can *help* bring order to some of the chaos of data and problems but in the end it is about the people. A crappy PM can use the best tools and the greatest\latest incarnation of Agile and still turn out a crappy project.
There were good PMs getting good results from "PM 1.0" and there were crappy PMs getting crappy results. "PM 2.0" or Agile or whatever, has some cool new ways to look at things and it has some cool stuff to offer so that it might enable a good PM to do their good work better or more easily.
But it is not going to make crappy PMs into good ones. They will continue to do crappy work with the new tools. They will just do it with the 'shine' of newness.
Project Managers manage projects through the efforts of people executing a credible and effective process. Yes, these people use the tools to provide consistent execution of those process.But these tools must work directly with the process.
The Project Management Tool Kit
These process can range from simple "list making" and task sequencing, resource assigning. What's interesting is several of "task management" tools show Waterfall time lines, the very "boggy man" the agile, PM 2.0 proponents rail against - go figure.
The intermediate solutions start with traditional project management tools, including Microsoft and all the competitors (if there are actually any).
But each of these tool sets, independent of their features and functions fails miserably to address the fundamentals of managing projects:
How can I recognize we are building the right thing for the customer, that the work efforts are moving the product or service forward in its technical or operational maturity at a rate that matches the planned rate needed to complete on time and on budget
Along with these performance measures, what are the recognized and addressed impediments to reaching the end on time, on budget?
From a April 2009, Defense Acquisition University (people who know some things about project management) "Insight Days" conference, there are 5 core "tools" needed for program success
- Earned Value performance measurement used to measure physical percent complete
- Risk Management and the Risk Matrices for each deliverables
- A work Breakdown Structure to describe what products or services are to be delivered
- A network schedule with the dependencies. Not the toy dependencies shown in the PM 2.0 list making tools, but real dependencies found in industrial strength scheduling tools
- Technical Performance Measures for each deliverable
PM Is About Assuring Progress is Being Made in Units of Measure Meaningful to the Stakeholders
This means we must know what those units of measure are, our capacity to deliver against those measures, the rate at which those measures will move the project forward, and most importantly the path through the work activities that supports the PLAN for the increasing maturity of the project or service.
When you start with the tool (PM 2.0) in the absence of the credible processes needed to answer these question, you've started on the wrong end of the proble
