“I’m the one holding the phaser, Captain.”

 

In the Star Trek (original series) episode “Mirror, Mirror,” Captain Kirk, Commander Scott, Dr. McCoy, and Lieutenant Uhura are sent via a transporter accident to a parallel universe, one where the Starship Enterprise serves a galactic empire rather than the benevolent United Federation of Planets. Most things are identical to their home universe, but their alternate-universe shipmates are aggressive and thuggish, and have orders to wipe out a planet’s inhabitants for failing to negotiate for a coveted asset. Kirk and the others must find a way to stop this senseless slaughter, while simultaneously finding a way back to their own universe.

Close to the climax, the alternate universe Spock (who’s wearing a beard) figures out that something is amiss with this Captain Kirk, and confronts him. Kirk, trying to stay in-character with his parallel, brutish self, threatens Spock by saying “You’re taking a big risk, Spock,” to which the Vulcan replies “I’m the one holding the phaser, Captain.”

Meanwhile, back here on Earth in the 21^st Century, ProjectManagement.com’s theme for December is developing technologies that may influence the practice of project management – the future, essentially. And I’ve had a couple of blogs thus far saying that there’s no way of knowing, predicting, or calculating the future, and therefore my readers should ignore any purveyor of business data analysis that contends to the contrary. But now I must admit, there’s a catch – there actually is a pair of business information streams that do a pretty good job of predicting the future. Since I wear a beard in this universe, I’m guessing my evil counterpart is noticeably without one, so I’ll blame previous blanket assertions to the contrary on a transporter accident, and the parallel Michael submitted those blogs.

The information streams I’m referring to are Earned Value and Critical Path. And they do indeed perform remarkably well in predicting the future, as long as a few conditions are met:

·         They’re applied to project work (as opposed to asset or strategic management subjects)

·         They’re set up by someone who knows what they are doing (HINT: not everyone who claims expertise in these areas is truly an expert), and

·         Everyone understands that the predictions of when a project or task or activity will end, and how much it will cost at that point, are predicated on the phrase at this rate of performance.

This is the major weakness of the parallel universe’s way of doing things, since that business model’s every projection is based on the data in the general ledger. “Performance” never enters in. Oh, sure, they can tell you how much was planned to be spent, and they can tell you how much was actually spent. They can also slice and dice the categories of the budgets and actual costs ten days to Sunday. But the general ledger has absolutely no way of quantifying performance. For that you need those project management geeks.

Unfortunately, in the epistemological competition between management information streams, the asset managers’ meme reigns supreme. I understand why – the need for governments to collect tax revenue trumps all other business concerns, and the general ledger is what enables them to do so. While the entire organization needs to be okay with the taxman, usually the only people who truly care about actual project performance are actually in the project teams.

Projecting into the future, both literally and metaphorically, ProjectManagement.com readers are very much like our universe’s Captain Kirk, facing off the evil, parallel universe’s Spock. It really does little good to try and explain why our version of the future is superior – the bearded Spock, analogous to the massive body of conventional business science “wisdom,”  is the one holding the phaser (a phaser is a ray gun, in case your childhood was bereft of Star Trek).

But there is hope. Much as alternate Spock recognizes that his Galactic Empire will inevitably crumble, so, too, are there young, up-and-coming managers who are less than convinced that the return-on-investment calculation can explain everything managerial.

And when they become the ruling majority, blogs like this one won’t appear as fantastic as science fiction, and everyone can return to the universe where Lt. Uhura does not accessorize with a bunch of holstered daggers.