Reflections on the Evolution of Project Management
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
The fact that International Project Management Day exists says a lot about how much project management has evolved. I’ve been managing projects for 30 years. In that time, I’ve seen it evolve from an undervalued, frequently disrespected discipline that people tried to avoid using, to a critical business approach that is helping to deliver major initiatives across the globe every single day.
To be fair, when I first started managing projects, the idea of project management was already well-established and well-respected—just not in the industry that I was working in. In engineering and construction work, it was already the standard, and had been for a long time. But in business and technology, it was still seen as added bureaucracy and administration.
I can think of many projects in the first decade or so of my career where the stakeholders flat out didn’t want me involved. That wasn’t just a challenge; it often made the work impossible because my team members reported to, and listened to, those stakeholders. Many PMs of my vintage will recount similar stories.
But look at us now.
Respected as partners of the business, contributors to the planning and delivery of strategy, and recognized as people leaders who often have the potential to make it to the executive level of organizations. In many countries, we are well remunerated, and have …
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