petitio principii is “begging the question. To beg the question is to assume as true the thing that you’re trying to prove.

Disputing this claim is not an argument against the existence
of the idea being disputed. It is entirely possible
for the idea being disputed to be true. But it is
not even wrong to claim that we know that the idea is true because we say it is so. A statement constructed in this way is not an argument. It is meaningless.

This approach is common in many discussions about processes associated with project management.

What happens in most instances is a conjecture is made in the absence of a domain and a context within that domain. For example, the governance processes used to run the IT department of a major western city are much different than the governance processes used to run the local grocery chain here in Boulder Colorado.

So discussions about the applicability of change control need a domain and context. In the absence of the domain and context, discussion is meaningless.

Another example is where to place the earned value controls on a large project. A self proclaimed project management heretic asserts that only fools don't manage EV at the lowest level of the project. At the Task level. As an aside this same self proclaimed heretic works for companies where there are 10's of 1,000's of tasks that have to be updated and transferred to the cost system for the projects he works. 

That aside, the 10's or 1,000's of PP&C analyst working EV project every day in the US Department of Defense manage the program at the Work Package level, not the Task level. The CAM (Control Account Manager) is accountable for reporting the physical percent complete of the Work Package from the individual tasks.

Until the discussion around the very real problems of project and program management start with a context and a domain and make use of a set of immutable set of project management processes, much of the conversation is just noise.

Author: Herding Cats