My friend Jack is sometimes a bit forward, but he has a point when he posts a comment on Andrew Filev's PM 2.0 blog. 

Notional charts are just that notional. Not the basis of decision making.  Jack is a very seasoned project manager, and like me the suggestion that a technology (Web 2.0 and it's cousin PM 2.0) is the basis of something new in the project management space is, how can I say this, not credible. 

Having been in the technical and business software development, enterprise IT, and related technology business since the late 70's, I've seen a several dozen or so “next new things,” ranging, from the first structured programming languages – Pascal and its father Algol-68 to the savior of the western world ADA, the Saviour of all things networked SNA and then of course TCP/IP, anyone remember XNS, much better than TCP/IP, but like all things Xerox too complex and proprietary. To the introduction of mini-computers – I wrote me first Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm in a PDP-8M with 4K of memory. Ran at a blazing 120KHz for 128 point “real” number sampling buffer. To the demise of COBOL. I actually tried to carry Grace Hoppers bag, when I picked her up at the Orange County airport for an ACM meeting. She sternly stated to me in her Navy Captain's uniform, “young man I am perfectly capable of carrying my own luggage.” To time sharing – Boeing TCS were APL wa our language of course for radar signal processing simulation. To the Lisa – I acutully wrote code for that beast.

All of this is the lay the ground work for Jack and others, that we're skeptical of “revolutionary solutions” to what is essentially an ancient problem – managing projects.

I draw my recent skepticism from a solid business book, introduce to me by Bill Duncan, of PMBOK 1996 fame – Beyond The Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management, Eccles and Nohria, Harvard Business School Press, 1992. 

Yes 1992, when the same approaches to “new idea” introduction were being written about then are reappearing now.

The issue for Jack and those like him – including me – is that the term Project Management has been relabeled to mean the technology of a small portion of manging project management – the interpersonal communications and people collaboration part. 

Once that relabeling has been introduced the Essence of Project Management, like Eccles's “essence of management,” is lost and the pitch becomes “look at my shinny new idea.” Which is not a idea or process per se but a product that has been labeled as Project Management, PM 2.0.

So if we want to talk about the Real PM 2.0, how able a solution to the abysmal success rate of enterprise IT. Or the equal abysmal success rate of DoD projects. DOE seems to have some secret sauce. Or that $4B write down at the IRS. Or the $3B “gone missing” for the World Wide Command, Control, and Communications System back in the 80's. Or the in the news today where the video link on the Predator can be hacked. The Information Assuance (the new term of encryption) guys needs to be taken to the wood shed.

PM 2.0 needs to search for actionable improvements in the processes used to actually manage projects. Where management is a verb not a noun.

The selling of PM 2.0 is a product approach to what is essentially a people and process problem. It's a one legged stool in a four legged table world.

Post written by: Herding Cats