Project Management Isn’t What You Do, It’s How You Think

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Leadership  

Project managers are in love with process.

To an extent, project managers are taught that project management is a process.

That is, sadly, a deceptive lie. It’s a useful lie at times. But it still isn’t true.

The most recent A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge acknowledged this fairly clearly in the preface of the document. It recognized that—taking the example of other bodies of knowledge—process descriptions were prescriptive, in a world that valued flexibility, adaptability and nuance.

It qualifies this, however, by saying that nothing in the current edition “negates alignment with the process-based approach of past editions. Many organizations and practitioners continue to find that approach useful for guiding their project management capabilities, aligning their methodologies, and evaluating their project management capabilities.”

Up until the last edition, the PMBOK® Guide was defined by both knowledge areas and process groups. Being candid, the process groups often were more accessible and intuitively understood than the knowledge areas, particularly for people newly coming to project management. This was true despite the fact that knowledge areas were in reality the dominant area of focus in the document from the outset.

These dimensions have both been removed in favor of principles (in the …

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