Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Considering the Context
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.
How can senior and middle managers with no project management training possibly know if your project management approach is actually relevant, appropriate or even effective? Well, they can start by examining these five key questions. But you should probably answer them for yourself first.
Last month continued a discussion whose primary argument is that project management is contextual; that it must reflect the practices that are appropriate and relevant for a given company to get stuff done. The danger in this contention, as one observer derisively put it, is that project management becomes anything that you say it is. Take this to its logical conclusion, and this is theoretically possible. The larger risk is not, however, that saying it makes it so. No, it the real danger is that anything called project management may be accepted as project management.
Organizations have now woken up to the fact that project management is a critical enabler. Examining the membership statistics for an organization like the Project Management Institute (PMI), for example, reveals that its four largest sectors of membership are what could be termed non-traditional industries: software, financial services, consulting and telecommunications. Sectors like construction and traditional engineering are not represented, and haven’t been for some time. That people from these …
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