Umm, Yeah, About That Minefield…

 

Concerning the new practitioner of project management – knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time to when I was 25 years old, and beginning to make the transition between technical writing and project management, and give that version of me a present not associated with stunts like Grey’s Sports Almanac (the book that Marty McFly attempts to bring back to the past in order to get rich betting on sports events in the movie Back to the Future, Part II), I think it would be a brief roadmap of the mines in the PM minefield that I was, epistemologically speaking, about to attempt to cross. But, since time travel (into the past, anyway) is impossible, I can only contemplate how much easier things would be if I had not gone charging into the minefield, blissfully unaware of the dangers, and proceeded to step on mine after mine, initiating some pretty spectacular career-endangering explosions.

What kind of a roadmap are we talking about here? I’m reminded of a former supervisor, Donn Byrnes, who had been a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force prior to working at the same contractor where I was employed. We were on the same project team, and one day he took me aside and told me “Michael, if you’re going to make it in project management, you have to remember three things: one, learn the rules of the game. Two, play by the rules of the game. Three, win using the rules of the game.” At the time I thought this advice was hopelessly cryptic, but I would learn that it was profoundly insightful each time I neglected the three rules. 

So, if I could teleport a document back to 1985, I think it would contain the following:
•    Sell everything you have and buy Apple® stock! (Just kidding – actually, “spend more time thinking about what Donn told you.”)
•    There are going to be people (perhaps, even, a majority) on your project team(s) who are ambivalent about the project’s success. After all, another project is expected to be following this one. However, they will always care deeply about their own personal advancement, and will do anything – anything – to attain it. If those tactics involve using calumny to ruin you, they will not hesitate. Takeaway point: don’t be so generous with your trust.
•    Project Management, as a discipline, is a natural competitor to finance and accounting. Most accountants have been trained to believe that their take on business is the final word, and any precept or person who challenges their maximize-shareholder-wealth meme, in their view, is either ignorant or misguided. As a natural competitor, a key component of your job will be to convince management, both project and executive, that the Earned Value and Critical Path Methodologies provide an irreplaceable information stream that has nothing to do with the General Ledger. IF you succeed – and this is, by the way, in no manner guaranteed – then some of the accountants, rather than sit back and watch your proffered information be perceived (rightly) as being more important than theirs, should be expected to employ any tactic at their disposal to discredit you, your reports, and project management in general. It’s simply the way they’ve been taught. Takeaway point: they're nice people, but the accountants are not your friends.
•    Risk management is a waste of time, money, and energy. Takeaway point: risk management is a waste of time, money, and energy.
•    In organizations that a structured as a strong matrix management environment, their projects will be more successful more often, but they will care nothing about you personally. You are just a highly replaceable cog in a machine to them. Weak matrix organizations care about you as an asset (or even as a person), but their project performance will not be as good. Takeaway point: the brutal ones tend to be more successful, but you will be miserable working for them.

I may not be able to communicate these points to the 25-year-old me, but there’s hope for you new practitioners of PM who also happen to be ProjectManagement.com blog readers.