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.
Management trends have come and gone. Project management's enduring value lies in substance over style. To capture this value, organizations must go beyond borrowing and benchmarking from others; they must give thought to how what is being borrowed can, or even should, be applied.
An emerging theme that I have encountered in conversations of late is the perception that project management is becoming the latest management fad. My reaction has ranged from "Is it?" to "Already?" to "Why did it take this long?" For someone who has been on the inside of promoting and developing project management as a corporate competency, it is easy to develop the impression that this is the way things have always been done. Objectively stepping back, however, project management as a formal discipline is a much newer concept for many organizations.
While the principles of formal project management have been around for decades in more ‘traditional’ industries such as engineering and construction, project management as a means of leading information technology, process management and organizational change projects began to be introduced in the early 1990s. It is only since the late 1990s that from an organizational and senior management perspective, it has begun to take root in many companies.
It is this level of organizational awareness that…
