Brave New World (Part 1)

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.

 

In my last column, we explored the question of whether or not project management could genuinely be considered a profession. For a number of reasons, I argued that it isn't right now, likely wouldn't be for some time and quite possibly shouldn't ever be a profession in the future. One of the largest reasons that I offered for this suggestion is the widespread diversity of project management, and the fact that identifying all of the project managers out there--let alone regulating them as a profession--would be more than a minor challenge.

That said, I've spent some time since writing the last column thinking about just what being a profession would actually mean. If project management were a formal profession, what would be the implications for project managers, the companies that employ them or for the associations that promote and support project management as a discipline? For the sake of understanding the implications a little better, what follows below and over the next few columns is a portrait of what this brave new world would look like and some of the challenges that each of these groups would face as a result.

For starters, as professional project managers we would now face personal liability for our actions, our advice and our projects. If our projects were found to fail, we could--and likely would--be held personally and professionally accountable …

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