Then Nobody’s An Expert

 

There’s a story I’ve used as an example in this blog before, about a display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art that was trash. I’m not engaging in hyperbolic art criticism here – it was literally litter, framed. One prescient critic pointed out that, if everything is “art,” then nothing really is, and I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment.

Meanwhile, back in the PM Universe, I’ve noticed another troublesome trend, particularly among Earned Value practitioners. It seems that almost every EV practitioner I’ve come across thinks of themselves as an “expert,” and can be counted on to allude to it, either in their CV or in discussions about how project management information systems ought to function or be implemented. Sometimes their claims to a high level of expertise have some viability, but other times they’re pretty spotty.

As An Example…

I’ve also already conveyed the story of the young woman who pretentiously demanded that all the managers in the room defer to her “expertise” in EV because she had the PMP® certification. I’m not even sure if she was aware that a significant percentage of the people she was trying to one-up also had PMP®s, or if she cared. She was an expert, by gum, and everyone else was to acknowledge her superiority by either agreeing with her, or else shutting up. It’s unfortunate she chose to use her new PMP® as a bludgeon rather than an accomplishment milestone, but that’s what she did. The funny thing about that story was that she had just asserted a concern that, on that particular project’s Cost Performance Report (Format I), the Earned Value figure didn’t equal the cumulative actual costs (ACWP).

“That’s right” the contractor’s project controls analyst calmly replied, “because that’s not how you calculate Earned Value.”

“Do you know PMI®?!” she stormed. “I’m a PMP®!”

The ensuing percentage of meeting participants who either rolled their eyes or face-palmed probably broke some sort of record.

Unfortunately, It’s Not That Rare

But I know for a fact that this phenomenon is not confined to the naïve-but-arrogant set. In several supposedly high-level meetings of people who have presented themselves as highly advanced in the field of cost performance management, many known-invalid arguments have cropped up, as if they should carry the day and settle the argument then taking place. I tease accountants a fair amount in this blog, but I will say this for them: they generally don’t allow arguments like the sunk-cost fallacy to enter into management decisions, much less let them completely settle a matter.

Conversely, it seems that EV “experts” can be bamboozled by even the simplest syllogisms, as if none of them had ever read Aristotle. Get a room full of these guys into an animated conversation, and the question-begging becomes commonplace. For the record, the phrase “this begs the question…” is not analogous to “this raises the question…”  The syllogism Begging the Question means to assume as true a premise that is either not established as fact, or else has not been agreed to by all participants. In the example I’m thinking of (and, again, have mentioned in a previous blog), the self-proclaimed expert was demanding deference because he had travelled overseas to consult on the topic of Earned Value. I swear I am not making this up. In fact, the fellow became rather irate when I called him on his clearly invalid assertion, that having one’s passport stamped somehow imparts advanced cost performance knowledge. Alarmingly, I had the distinct impression that, had I not done so, no one else in the room would have.

Why This Is A Problem

“So, Michael, what’s the problem here, really?” I can hear some readers say. “What if these EV practitioners think a lot of themselves? Whom does that hurt? Isn’t confidence a good thing, particularly in a consultant?” Well, yes and no. When these consultants start, say, writing guidance documents that are chock-full of these utterly unsupported hypotheses, and those guidance documents get adapted by auditing agencies, then the entire field of Earned Value Management suffers.

Then there’s the problem I began describing in the first paragraph. If everyone is an expert, then it has the same effect as grade inflation at the Ivy League schools. So what if you graduated with honors from Harvard? So did 91% of your fellow class mates![i]

There’s really no point in trying to correct this problem through encouraging all these EVM experts to behave better. That’s simply not going to happen. I mean, look at the offerings from the typical EV symposium. I can almost guarantee that a majority (91%, even) will fall into one of the following categories:

• I saved my project by embracing EV (or its subvariant, My Project Did Great, And We Used Earned Value),
• Everyone should be doing EV, or
• The basics of EV, for the bazillionth time.

…and that’s it. Only occasionally do you see any new research proffered, or even an exhaustive analysis of past projects that have performed well using basic techniques compared to failed ones that did not. And just to be clear, if the EV seminars and symposiums are dropping the ball on advancing legitimate management science theories, then the venues that do perform this function are left to people like ProjectManagement.com bloggers.

As I’ve maintained in previous posts, the answer here is to return to the basics of true management science analysis. For those who have read Aristotle, we should embrace those writers who rely on logos, and eschew those who rely on ethos, i.e., the “experts.”

But, since everyone’s an expert, then nobody really is, so this problem is kind of solving itself.

[i] Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Harvard-s-dirty-little-secret-is-out-grade-2868775.php on August 5, 2017, 2100 MDT.