Whitty's paper suggests that each of these topics generate an emotional response in project managers. Presumably the same goes for most people on the project team, and they key stakeholders as well.
I am seriously happy this guy is wrinting about project management. Overall, his work is a very fresh and potentially brutal assessment of project management practice. And yet, he's "one of us."
His work has been referenced here at this site before (and probably will be again.)
And you can easily find more of his stuff via google.
Definitely a step up from the "What is a WBS" type articles out there.
No wonder our perception of project work is distorted.
#PMFlashBlog – Project Management Around the World
– Brisbane, Australia
By Jon Whitty
My
conversations with project managers about project management began in Brisbane
a number of years ago. I started a small study (which I published as: Project management
artefacts and the affective emotions they evoke) where I asked project
managers a simple question to which they had to pencil sketch the answer. No
words were allowed. I would ask the project managers to close their eyes and
remember a time they were managing a project. I then say, “Now answer this
question by drawing the answer”. The question is “managing that project was
like {draw}” And what they draw is most revealing. They certainly don’t draw a Gantt chart!
What I discovered
from this simple experiment is that our perceptions of project work is massively
distorted by the various common artefacts (billboards if you like) of the
project management community. The Gantt chart is a prime example. It reflects very
little of the project experience ahead. An itemised to-do-list would do a
better job. And in many cases I’ve found this is actually what is used.
To explore this
further consider how pictures are manipulated every day. And these images can
have an enormous distorting influence on our view of the world and of
ourselves.
I’d like
you to watch this ‘Dove Campaign’ video from start to finish. And as you watch
it consider carefully the impact the final image has on both the model and you
and I who encounter his picture at the bus stop.
No wonder we
have negative images of our own working practices.
In
a previous version of this post I said “I’d love to be able to create a video
someday to show the creation of the Gantt chart in a similar way." And here one is!
On the left
is how project managers really experience a project. And on the right is a manipulated
and distorted version of events.
This is
tinkering with reality in so many ways. The Gantt chart smooths out the turbulent,
emotional, punctuated, messy, and unforgiving real world into smooth, modernist,
calming and confident lines. The real
pictures are packed with emotion, jaggedness, and non-linear relationships. None
of them are even the same! If a project is anything, it’s personal and experienced
personally. Yet somehow we have been duped into believing that all projects can
be represented by a Gantt chart.
And anyway
the Gantt chart is altogether the wrong piece of art work to represent the work
of a project. What it does represent it an operational production environment. If
you want to know more about this then take a look at the writings of PatrickWeaver and TerryMcKenna.
I think the
project management practitioner community should take a long hard look at their
use of Gantt charts. Don’t wait for the project management professional bodies to do it because the
Gantt chart reinforces all of the ideals these bodies base their certification on.
From my
many conversations with practising project managers I would say that the Gantt
chart lowers their self-esteem about their work practices. And furthermore it raises
the expectations of senior management to unrealistic heights.
If you can’t
achieve what’s on your Gantt chart, don’t you feel out of control?
Perhaps we
should put warnings on Gantt charts saying that the real world has been
manipulated to look harmonious, ordered, and in control.
For a while now I have been unable to comment on Jurgen Appelo’s Noop.nl blog. (Is it Chrome? Is it a setting on my desktop?) So I’ll comment here.
He’s posted a great article today that I think really helps clarify a problem we have with communication. Some domains are simple while some are complex. And the way we talk about them can be either simple or complicated.
Jurgen has framed these two aspects of simplicity into a new model (for me at least.)
I think it's instantly useful in helping teams understand that they need to work on making their modelling of systems simpler to enable communication and shared understanding, even though some domains are inherently complex. You can’t make a trip to the moon simple, but you can make the conversations easier.
Jurgen, this is an outstanding post. Thanks for sharing it.
(This may also dovetail into a recent Stephen Jon Whitty paper/talk about how project domains really are different and maybe we need different approaches for each of them.
There is a conversation going on among some of the agile thought leaders about replacing the project paradigm with product management.
If the world of software development shifts to many small projects (e.g. a week or two long) the 'unique endeavor' thing fades away and software development becomes operational.
The human side of projects - change management can also become operational by getting the business stakeholders to also adopt the cadence of small releases.
There is still plenty of room for project management - on things that really are unique and special.
But project management has been applied in many instances where it has been effective in resolving unmanaged chaos, but has in fact been the wrong solution for the problem.
“We do not talk about what we see; we see only what we can talk about.”
This paper examines the way we have framed our conception of project management and challenges it suggesting that project management knowledge isn’t that special at all, and by building up this mystique around it we are hampering the ability of projects to successfully deliver results rather than helping.
It’s an interesting perspective, and one that helps you think differently about your job and the work you do. It makes you challenge your assumptions and look to find better ways of managing and delivering projects.
The question it raises for me is how much is project management knowledge constructed to solve real problems, and how much of it is self-repeating, self-sustaining behaviours that act mainly as a way for PM professionals to establish and maintain their importance in their professional community.
(The same questions can be applied to the establishment of the IIBA and the BABOK.)
If you are philosophically inclined this article is for you.
K reviews another Whitty article at 8 till late.
