Who’s The Judge Here, Anyway?

 

I was recently in a discussion with my older son, who works as a prosecutor and graduated from Notre Dame Law School (Magna Cum Laude … not that I’m proud, or anything), when he brought up a highly relevant point that I had completely missed.

“Objection!” I interjected, “Evidence not entered as fact!”

“That’s gibberish” he replied.

“Not according to the television law shows I’ve seen.”

“Then you need to watch a higher caliber of law shows.”

Meanwhile, back in the PM world, there exists a surfeit of ideas that claim to be within the umbrella of legitimate project management science. Some of these (critical path, earned value) unquestionably belong, while others are at best suspect, at worst plunging whole sectors of project management theory into irrelevance. As my regular readers know, I regularly skewer these ideas, which nominally include:

• Generally Accepted Accounting Principles masquerading as project cost/schedule performance analysis,
• Risk Management or Analysis, in most of its forms,
• Communications Management, which does have its place, but has been marketed far beyond its nominal efficacy,
• Quality Management, which shares with risk management an over-dependence on Gaussian Curves,
• Human Resources management, which belongs with, well, resource management,
• Procurement, which belongs completely under the asset managers’ purview,

…among others. I can rail to my blogger heart’s content against these theories and practices, but there is no final arbiter, a judge who can render a decision that all parties must respect going forward.

Or is there?

Note what the Agile/Scrum developers did. In the crushingly competitive IT market, they adapted just those project management concepts that they believed provided a competitive advantage, and paid less (or no) attention to those practices that were, well, irrelevant. What traditional PM practices are missing from most Agile/Scrum projects? Just:

• GAAP practices pretending to provide cost/schedule performance,
• Risk Management or analysis, in most of its forms,
• Communications Management has been intensified, but only internal to the project team, and serves as a substitute for more formal change control or configuration management. All that business about engaging all stakeholders is notably absent.
• Quality Management is also put into its place, being very important to successful IT project delivery, but not to the point that the QC guys can slam the brakes on the whole project, or dramatically alter the way the software engineers do their jobs,
• Many (most?) IT projects get delivered without any HR influence, and
• Procurement. Including procurement might be a bit unfair, since IT projects are typically labor-intensive, but you see my point.

For those concepts and ideas whose developers/backers desperately want to be considered relevant, there will be no judge, jury, and competing assertions tested for veracity in a finding-of-legitimacy setting. They can only submit articles, columns, and blogs, entreating their readers to use some of those concepts in order to be doing “real” or “legitimate” PM. In the meantime, the ultimate decider of relevancy – the free market – will pick and choose which ideas are indeed helpful in their markets, and which are, well, irrelevant.

The jury’s out on those areas I’ve regularly criticized in this blog. But I’m optimistic, though this optimism may be fueled by the sub-standard legal dramas I’ve been watching.