Making a Method Out of a Molehill
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.
On the other hand, I routinely run into organizations in the course of my consulting work who quite confidently state, "We already have a project management methodology!" when, after further exploration, I find that what they really have is a lifecycle that describes how they build their information systems. Or how they bring new products to market. Or how to do whatever else their projects do. Just not how they manage them.
In my column last month, I talked about the role of process and methodology in organizations, and what constituted an effective process capability--one that was relevant, appropriate, scaleable and, above all, both useable and actually used. This month takes a slightly different approach: What methodologies should an organization have in place to begin with? As a project manager, what processes should my company reasonably expect me to use? What am I expected to know, and how am I expected to use that knowledge?
To begin with, let's talk about what processes an organization should have in place. Having argued for simplicity and relevance of process in my last column, I'm going to go out on a limb here and …
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