Reinventing Project Management for Knowledge Workers

Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.

  Agile   Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Manufacturing   Talent Management   Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)  

Are the bulk of today’s projects that require subject matter experts to share information and collaborate on novel solutions really best managed via the control mechanisms from the 19^th century? Do our bodies of knowledge and so-called project management “best practices” translate from the industrial world of manufacturing that inspired them into the information age?

Is planning, more planning and then some more planning really the best way to start a project when the stakeholders acknowledge they have an incomplete picture of what needs to be done and the environment is changing?

I could go one with these rhetorical questions, but they all boil down to the mismatch of using industrial age processes in a knowledge worker environment. The tools are no longer appropriate for the situation. Just as we would not fill a car’s fuel tank with a bag of oats and expect it to perform, neither should we expect a modern collaboration based project to be best served by a WBS.

Techniques and tools like Gantt charts evolved with the industrial revolution they served. With the advent of the factory and automated manufacturing came new ways of organizing work that decomposed problems into simpler and simpler steps until localized labor with a single task could be used. These industrial age approaches are extremely efficient for defined, repeatable work. …

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