Dear Joanna,

In my opinion, the purpose of pmbok, prince2, six sigma, etc. is to encompass the scope of all good practices and generalize them. Following these methodologies you won't miss anything. But, of course that required much more resources. That is why, good project management requires not methodology only, but also a good project manager with his own treatment and expertise which is based on methodology, but adjusted for the field and type of projects that he is good in.

I have written an article, based on PMBOK, but focused only on innovation projects (as PMBOK is too generalized). This is only one perspective of innovation projects, of course, as innovation projects are spread in every industry and place.

Article Innovation project tool for outlining innovation projects

Dear Joanna,

In my opinion, the purpose of pmbok, prince2, six sigma, etc. is to encompass the scope of all good practices and generalize them. Following these methodologies you won't miss anything. But, of course that required much more resources. That is why, good project management requires not methodology only, but also a good project manager with his own treatment and expertise which is based on methodology, but adjusted for the field and type of projects that he is good in.

I have written an article, based on PMBOK, but focused only on innovation projects (as PMBOK is too generalized). This is only one perspective of innovation projects, of course, as innovation projects are spread in every industry and place.

Article Innovation project tool for outlining innovation projects

basically, it is used to standardise the tasks in a project so that all stakeholders are on the same page when it comes to overseeing the project process

Hi Joanna, it is good that you asked this question. People were engaged in project management for centuries. However, it was not called project management then.

Let's support you want to built a dog house or a kitchen cabinet. You might not want to call this as a 'project' or a 'project management'. But what would you do?

Initiating

You think about what you want to accomplish

Get approval from your household members (aka stakeholders), where the dog house should be build

Find out who is going to help you out so that you can successfully complete your dog house on time, on budget, with a decent quality.

Planning

You will plan the bird's eye view of the dog house.

You might identify the following:

Risks - is this a good time to make a dog house? What if rains? Should I study for my exam or I rather work on making my dog house? What if the dog didn't like it and it rather sleep with me on my bed?

Milestones - would I take the whole weekend to make the dog house? what should I work on saturday morning/evening & sunday morning & evening?

budget - how much money that i would need.

All you might plan at a higher level.

Executing

this is where you (and the project team) start to do the work, creating the deliverables (e.g. doors, windows, and other itmes that will be in the dog house)

two of your cousins don't work well together. This is where you communicate well with them and (perform a sort of a team-building activities).

If something goes wrong, you might call or contract with a vendor.

You will spend most of your money (budget) as you develop your deliverables

One of your cousin may say, this is not good (a change request) and he wanted to do it in a different way. You might consult with others in the house (a change control board - they may either approve or reject his idea) to see if they go with his idea. Then you will implement and approve the changes.

Monitoring and Controlling

things might not go as you planned (miss an item in the critical path)

you to to identify and fix the changes in order to get back on track (corrective action)

It is already sunday afternoon. You may decide to complete the project by evening (aka. fast track the project). You may put more resources (entice another cousin for a free pizza and a beer, if he helped you out) or reduce the scope (rather than a hand carved artistic roof, just decided to go with a cheap plain roof) - and then magically finished the project on time (aka. 'crashed' the project)

Closing

You finished the dog house

showed your family members. They all might say wow...good gracious...how did you do it? They are happy with the dog house.

While having a pizza and beer, you handed out a small gifts to your cousins who helped you (making payment)

You put all the expense in an excel sheet and then save it in an external hard disk (archiving the record). You were discussing the fun part (lessons learned) and you guys overcome the obstacles and celebrated the occasion ('team release'). You may even type certain key information in a notepad (historical record) and save it your external hard disk, just in case if you needed it. In case, if your next door neighbor or someone wants to have a dog house, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You have information already (Historical records).

Dear Joanna,

Your question is indeed a very important question every management/organization should ask in the first place, since it will determine the crucial parts further in the development.

Following mentioned practices/guidelines are considered valuable addition to the organization. While it might be true that these practices could reduce risks to some extents, it is also worth mentioning that these practices were of scientific observations of previous management practices.

On the other hand, management practices are not solely scientific, in which arts and humanistic dimension (including creativity, mood, spiritual aspects, etc. - which one might say less scientifically defined) also taken into account. In addition, in line with development of civilization, management practices also develop. Therefore, those mentioned practices may need to be revised according to the latest condition.

In conclusion, it is good to follow one of these practices or its combination thereof. However, we should not focus on the practice itself, but to the humanistic / popular dimension instead, because people and civilization always change and are highly dynamic.

As a professor of Project Management, I am somewhat biased here... However, PM has historically been proven to be a useful set of guidelines to assist in executing change or delivering new outcomes.

It is however important to realise that the maturity of an organization's PM practices can vary dramatically. Some large organizations utilise PRinCE2 and PMBOK based frameworks with significant benefit (I don't see six sigma as a PM methodology), but others use basic PM tools and techniques in a more simplistic way, and still gain benefit from using PM 'their way'.

Personally, I think that the behavioural aspects of managing people who deliver project tasks and activities is more important than having a great project plan - to my mind, a good Gantt chart and a solid WBS never 'delivered' anything. they are planning tools. People, delivering project deliverables, drive the project, and projects are therefore essentially 'socially constructed' entities.

I am not trying to say that planning isn't important here, because it is... but don't expect your plan to remain stable until the end of the project. Things change; new requirements emerge; turbulent external environments require different outcomes; etc...

Tools and frameworks help to keep you on track, but people deliver projects...

Always happy to talk about this if you 'reach out'...

@ Stephen A. (Steve) Leybourne, I agree with you. In fact, the they of methodology or framework that you chose depends on the nature of project per se. Depends on the nature and complexity, one can even use agile or scaled agile methodologies. If there is a clear cut historical information available, if the stake is high, or the deliverable are crystal clear; one can go with the waterfall methodology. There is nothing wrong to it. That said, if it is a high tech project, deliverables are unknows, too many changes are expected, and the stakes are not that high, then agile might be a better option. Even the project management institute has entered into agile arena as they are popular these days. Even the latest PMBOK has included agile syllabus as part of its curriculum for the PMP exam.

Even in agile projects, there is a bit of planning is needed. But the traditional project management is a bit over kill. Plus, ~70% projects do fail!

However, what I see more challenging in the traditional projects is the stakeholder management. However, that's not the case in the agile project.

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