The Innovations We Still Need In Managing Projects

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.

  Innovation  

Projects are often seen as a source of innovation. With this article, I want to turn that around. Specifically, I want to explore the innovation that project management still needs if it is going to (continue to) deliver value.

In tackling this subject, it is probably important to acknowledge that innovation is project management's beating heart. It is in fact central to the establishment of project management as a discipline. Like the beating of our own hearts, however, it is occasionally perhaps too easy to take this fact for granted.

The history of project management doesn't go back very far in time, relatively speaking. Modern project management as we acknowledge it to be practiced is only about 50 or so years old. The consensus agreement is that many of the modern techniques of project management emerged from operations management practices at DuPont and the development of the Polaris missile submarine platform for the U.S. Department of Defense.

What is less acknowledged is how project management practices emerged. The development of practices to manage large-scale projects and programs was predicated on a belief that managing the way things had been done in the past would lead to failure. Extensive collaboration, and the involvement of consulting firms like McKinsey and the Rand Corporation, led to the development of new approaches that still have …

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