New Practitioner PM: What's Your Advice?

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.

  Career Development   Estimating   New Practitioners  

This month’s theme at ProjectManagement.com is “New Practitioner PM.” I assume authors are supposed to write useful and insightful advice for people new to the project management, but I think we should take this opportunity to instead have some fun with them and generally mess with their heads. I mean at no other point will people be so gullible and naïve!

Agile methods have legitimized counter-intuitive planning guidelines so we could tell them anything! “PERT“--yes, that stands for Problems Eventually Resolve Themselves, meaning issues are best just ignored (ha ha!). However, looking back at my career starting out as a project manager 25-plus years ago, I know I would have been mortified had anyone been so mean. I suspect today’s new practitioners are similar to how every experienced project manager felt when they were first starting their journey into project management: eager to deliver value, willing to learn and happy to work hard. So how best can we help them?

I think my initial juvenile reaction to mess with new practitioners comes from the sense of feeling overwhelmed with the sheer scope of advice available--where do you start? Having just stepped through the door into the world of project management, everything is new. But what is most important? Like everything, it depends on your circumstance. Similar to trying to …

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