The Secret Life of Projects

David Schmaltz - April 15, 2010

David Schmaltz is a project manager in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Communications Management ProjectsAtWork

Maturity models, metrics and misleading metaphors have encumbered project leaders and teams. They miss the essence of knowledge work, which can’t be tidily represented in a PERT or Gantt chart. We need to explore different models to supplement and better guide our project efforts.

When the five-year old great-grand daughter saw her mom cutting off the end of the ham before setting it into an over-sized roasting pan, she asked why. Her mom replied that her mother taught her how to bake ham, and she’d always cut the end off the ham first. “Go ask grandma,” she suggested. Grandma had the same story as the girl’s mother, suggesting that she go ask great grandmother. Great grandmother listened to the question and replied, “I never had a pan large enough to hold a whole ham.”

I suppose there must have been a time when most projects could be fairly represented as they are still most often represented, as hierarchical trees of tasks leading into convergent milestones, populated by teams whose members assume assigned roles corresponding to designated responsibilities. In those days, teams of workers performed individual ‘tasks’ to create ‘deliverables.’

Who created these hierarchical task trees? Who defined the milestones? Who …

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The Secret Life of Projects

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