Are We Devaluing Project Management?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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I’m old enough to remember when project management was still a bit of a fringe profession in many industries. I’ve been in situations where I was told that I wasn’t a real manager, I was only a project manager; and I’ve worked on projects where the sponsor thought my role was everything not assigned to someone else (I know, for some of you that hasn’t changed much).

Fortunately, project management today is not only better understood, it is (broadly speaking) more appreciated. Part of that understanding and appreciation has come from the growth in the importance of projects as organizations have been forced to evolve more quickly, but there has also been recognition that effective and efficient project management can be a difference maker in enabling organizations to succeed.

That has now reached the point where project management skills are increasingly seen as an important part of many different roles in business, with people who will never hold a title of “project manager” still being given training in the foundational skills of planning, estimating, schedule and risk management, etc. That’s a recognition that projects are an integral part of how a modern organization operates—and that virtually every role will need to be involved in projects in some capacity on a relatively frequent basis.

Perhaps the most …

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