Making projects work: is project management too complicated?

by Elizabeth on 10/06/2009

This is the third part in the Making Projects Work video debate series. It’s a really short video, and it looks at whether or not we are making it too difficult for ourselves!

The final video will appear here tomorrow.

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Twitter Comment

“Having a 60 page project initiation document is not the best place to start” – [link to post]

– Posted using Chat Catcher
http://www.aligned.com Aligned

Yes, project management is too complex. We’re hoping to rid the world of gantt charts so we may be biased.

http://www.elizabeth-harrin.co.uk Elizabeth

Good luck with that! I tend to focus on the left-hand columns, not the charts which are too difficult to read and don’t mean anything to stakeholders.

http://paradigmpop.com Diwant Vaidya

The ideas shared here are very much the problems we are trying to solve! However, I have found it is one thing for talking heads to agree on them and quite another to have a project manager willing to take the steps to simplify their project by enacting a little new something on these lines.

http://www.elizabeth-harrin.co.uk Elizabeth

It’s always tricky to get people to adopt to change and project managers are no exception! I suppose like embedding any change in an organisation, the best route is to convince people that there is something in it for them – but the job of convincing PMs (if we don’t jump to it straight away) is probably the role of the PMO. What do you think?

http://www.valleyspeak.com Veronica Brown

Yes, Project Management has become too complex. We somehow think that getting rocket science tools will solve everything. More often than not humans are the problem. If simple estimation and communication breaks down, tools wont help.
http://www.niwotridge.com Glen B. Alleman

This is one of those never ending conversation that demonstrate the imaturity of all involved.
If we were building a bridge on a river, would we have inapproiated processes and overly heavy documentation? If so, this is called “margin erosoion.” At the same time would we take short cuts and allow the engineers to performance processes of their own personal biases? Probably not or the bridge falls down.

We’ve built a paradigm that says software development is different. Which it is. But so different it is not subject to the common sense process of “engineering, architecture, and management.”

Without this recognition, this conversation is its self a “death march,” with not real improvement.
http://paradigmpop.com Diwant Vaidya

@Glen I Disagree. There is only one way to hammer a nail through two pieces of wood for that bridge, and I knew how to do that since I was five. For code, there are so many ways to approach simple things (I give you the complex world of Java as reference) that more documentation is required for the same kind of management as one would have on building a bridge. This is why we have alternative approaches in development. Would you try building a bridge using Agile methodology?

(I got a funny visual from this: Pair Programming would mean you have one engineer watch another engineer hammer a nail properly. Haha!)
http://paradigmpop.com Diwant Vaidya

@Veronica Good tools can help with many communication issues.

http://www.elizabeth-harrin.co.uk Elizabeth

Tools can help with communication, but they can’t do communication for you – people do that!

http://paradigmpop.com Diwant Vaidya

@Elizabeth Yes…and no. I’ll let someone jump in on this one though.
http://www.niwotridge.com Glen B. Alleman

Diwant,
Actually there are 100′s of ways to build a bridge.
Pair prgramming means you have one engineer work side by side with another in the design and construction of the bridge.
I work in the heavy construction, aerospace and defense and enterprise IT program management domain.
When you remove you “toy” examples, you may find it’s a bit more complicated than you’re suggesting.
Here’s a “real” bridge being built as we speak:
http://bridgepros.com/projects/Hoover_Dam_Bypass_Bridge/
Rememeber this is “project management,” no code development.
http://www.lewisandfowler.com Glen B. Alleman

Divant,
See if this matches your concept of pounding nails into wood when you were 5.
http://bridgepros.com/projects/Hoover_Dam_Bypass_Bridge/Hoover-Outreach.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TopViewNarrows.jpg
or maybe some of these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_suspension_bridge_spans

In fact the bridges are designed and built using iterative and incremental process. They’re not called agile, they’re called Good Engineering.
http://paradigmpop.com Diwant Vaidya

@Glen You and my colleague both caught me on that one! Wow those bridges are a little more complex than I had in mind, and I think more than one software developer would make that mistake of simplifying the grass on the other side. This is actually a conversation I wanted to have, between someone in construction and someone in software development about pm. Would you be up for a friendly debate on a comment stream if I set up a blog entry solely for that purpose?
http://www.niwotridge.com Glen B. Alleman

Diwant,
I think we all assume our little piece of the world is how the rest of the world works. I know I do at times. The partner I work for runs the operational side of our business, contracts, joint ventures, government compliance. I’m amazed when we looks at some of my program management plans when I skip over those little details.

One of the better voices in construction is Hal Macomber.

I’d of course be interested in a “conversation,” in place of a debate. There are many points of view around the management of projects. I persoannly like to focus on the irreducable activities, indepdendent from any method or theological point of view. I’ve spoken about that many times in the Herding Cats Blog.

I will say up front for full disclosure, that I an agile advocate in principle and of many of the practices in the right domains. At the same time, I work in a software entensive domain, where the software flys aircraft, guides missles, controls turbines, and the like. As well, the money for these projeccts comes from public and corporate sources for the most part, so governance and oversite dominate the methods – for the right reasons.

So sure a Blog about this that will capture the issues and the cconversation sounds good to me.
http://paradigmpop.com Diwant Vaidya

Great, I’ll set something up and ping you here.