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Well the new PMBoK Guide includes an Agile Practice Guide but this is not what concerns me. My concern is how people who deal with today’s projects think of yesterday’s approach to project management.

When I listen to my parents I sometime hear “In the past everything was better, and things got worse over time” or at least that the perception that some people have despite the many observable trends that indicate otherwise. Namely comparing the old structures of “classical” or “traditional” project management (with certain “bad” connotation) to the “modern” structures of Agile Project Management that are positively rated. I have had difficulties with the way some people differentiate these “two worlds”. It is probably clear that project management methodology has changed over time to suit certain types of projects but there is no need to draw a sharp line and negative conclusion of the “classical” project management and think of it as a thing of the past. What do you do in such a case? Well, what does a Daniel Hendling do in such a case? He meets with James (Jim) T. Snyder, a practitioner and a forefather of Clumsy and Fat Project Management, who founded PMI in 1969 and laid the foundation for Project Management standards in the shape of PMBoK Guide. So, I talked to Jim about the world of yesteryears and today’s and the difference between then and now. Then at the time of the moon landing and Woodstock when projects were planned and executed according to a plan. I asked whether project tasks were something that were planned sequentially and required changes to be registered formally to be subsequently accepted or rejected following a bureaucratic process. Jim’s answer was that projects have always been something of an uncertain nature and Project Management is always about implementing change in a specific time. He talked about projects from his early days in Project Management to today. I wanted to know from Jim how a picture of “classical methods” resonated with a sense of heaviness. His response was in three clear answers:

• IT development projects were developed in a highly competitive environment and in aggressive timeframe to a fixed price and target dates. With these constraints it is necessary that a new approach is adopted for Scope Management.
• There is an increasing number of Project Managers and therefore the likelihood of having bad Project Managers is that much higher.
• Some decisions makers including Principles at companies’ executive levels are expected to make project related decisions but have no idea of Project Management or the nature of a project.

Jim said a “bad Project Manager” does not live and exercise Project Management as it should because he does not understand the nature of the project. He rejects change and chooses his methodology so that change is understood to be an “undesirable condition”. Furthermore, he understands the contradictory limitations of a project as static elements that just need appropriate planning and management. From Jim’s point of view a “bad” leader is either one who understands a project as a “complex task without significant uncertainties” or eliminating all uncertainties thus reducing the project to a set of static activities that happen as planned. The PMI community (or the original community) or the PMBoK Guide (including the first edition) has never pretended that a project consists of tasks that are executed sequentially without any uncertainties and that any changes are not desirable and should be avoided at all costs. I think we are facing a challenge toady as we did 50 years ago in the way we interpret and live Project Management influences and how they are seen and understood. Standards such as PMBoK Guide should not be understood dogmatically as a “bible” that should be followed to the letter. On the contrary, such standards should be understood as a guide to help lead a project to a successful conclusion. Furthermore, today as it was 50 years ago, projects are something organic because they depend on people and people do not work as robots but on the contrary they are always good for surprises.   (by Daniel Hendling; English version by Faez Tuma)