Is There Really Anything New in Project Management?

 

At the risk of revealing my age, I am going to admit that when I entered the workforce there were no personal computers, PDAs, or cell phones.  My IBM Selectric typewriter was "the bomb," but the most technologically sophisticated thing I had in those days was the Univox amp for my electric guitar.

Technologically speaking, my life has really changed a lot in the last 30 years.  Can the same be said for work management best practices?

Some might argue that project management software has made an impact, which I will agree it has, to a degree.  However, has the role of project managers or project management itself evolved?  Thankfully project teams aren't comprised of slaves under the lash building monuments to the Pharaohs—but can we really say project management itself has changed that much?

How many Egyptians did it take to scratch status updates onto tablets for the Pharaoh to validate the progress of his Giza Plateau building project?  I wonder how many project managers feel they have become slaves to manually inputting project data into the portfolio management software, knowing the information will be out of date by the time their CEO gets to see it?

Although the technology has advanced from stylus and tablet to multi-core processors and smart-phones, maybe we should take a good hard look at project failure rates and ask ourselves if we've really advanced that far.  Or should we step back and consider if there might be a better way to get work done?

I don't think the limitations of project software are entirely to blame.  Organizations need to reconsider the role of project managers and empower them to facilitate efficiency among project teams by providing work management tools that make it easy for team members to update status and get their work done.  "Management" implies working with people.  When project managers can throw off the shackles that prohibit them from working with individual project team members, maybe then we'll see something really new in project management software.