Ignorance Is Risk

Bill is President, Project Management Partners in Lexington, Mass., and is a consultant and trainer.

  ProjectsAtWork  

What you don't know can hurt you. What you think you know can, too.

I once heard an experienced project manager assert that a project could have infinite resources. Why did he think that? He'd taken a training course during which the instructor said it was so. When it comes to project management, we should examine our assumptions periodically to decide if they are building blocks or mental blocks.

I have more than 100 books about project management on my shelves, and nearly every one contains at least one seriously misleading statement. I have reviewed about two dozen project management training courses from a variety of vendors (including most of the major ones), and each of these also contains potentially misleading guidance.

Usually, the error is one of omission: The author fails to provide adequate guidance about context. For example, one of the most popular introductory training programs shows how to develop a Gantt chart without ever mentioning the need for analysis of the network or the resources. In a similar vein, one of the best books ever written on the mechanics of scheduling says that scope and quality are not the concern of the project manager! This may be true on occasion during the construction phase of a facility development project, but it's certainly not true of most projects.

In the spirit of challenging popular myths, I've …

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