The Enemy is Us?

 

Abraham Lincoln has always been one of my heroes. I'm in the middle of a book written a few years back by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Pulling together a cabinet of many of the men he defeated in the Republican primary and even a number of Democrats, Lincoln successfully cobbled together a team of divergent opinions that ultimately helped him lead the country through one of the most difficult times in American history.

One of the things I have come to admire about President Lincoln is his unwillingness for anyone to take responsibility for his decisions when others disagreed or even his mistakes while in office. There were numerous occasions when cabinet members were blamed for his decisions, and it would have been easy for them to take the political fall-out for them, yet Mr. Lincoln would never allow it. In fact, he often put himself at great political risk to ensure that none of his cabinet ever took the blame for something unpopular he did or advocated (you don't see that in Washington anymore). It reminds me of President Harry Truman who famously said, "The buck stops here!"

Last week Patrick Thibodeau, writing for ComputerWorld wrote an interesting article about software and project management. I must admit, it made me cringe, but over the last few days as I've thought about it, I think we need to think about it.

"The data about software development is sobering," writes Thibodeau. "Many projects end up over budget and behind schedule, and one study puts the failure rate at one in five."

I don't like reading this any more than you do.

Thibodeau introduces us to Billie Blair, an organizational psychologist and president and CEO of Change Strategists Inc., who is called in when multimillion dollar projects get into trouble. "In nearly every case, Blair said the source of all project dysfunction is the project manager," he writes.

Ouch.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time I've heard this in the last six months. Tom Peters, who was one of the keynote speakers at the Gartner PPM Summit held earlier this year in San Diego, said, "All failures are your fault."

Although Mr. Peters' comments were designed to elicit a reaction and were meant to be a little more inflammatory than Mr. Thibodeau's and Ms. Blair's comments, I wonder if we should individually do a little introspection and evaluate whether or not we are part of the problem—or even "the problem" as Blair suggests.

Blair argues that there are many project managers who aren't up to the job. "Project managers have to deal with people, embrace conflicts and not run from them, know how to assist people in sorting things out, and be compelling," she says. Engineers and IT professionals "are wonderful at what they do and their skill set, but generally those managing skills are not there and they have to acquire them."

Thibodeau suggests that the people part of the software development equation is getting more attention thanks to more agile development methods that foster a "less rigid approach that requires a more flexible person at all levels, and not just the manager level."

I like the way agile approaches introduce individual team members to the planning process early and allow them to participate in an active way in creating the plan. I also like how deliverables are expected regularly and at shorter intervals. I don't see why projects that are planned in a more waterfall environment can't function in a similar way. After all, isn't the waterfall approach supposed to represent the natural cascading of one event to another? Wouldn't engaging the team earlier in the process increase buy-in, team member engagement and ultimately increase the odds of a successful project without negatively impacting the natural flow of events?

Whether or not you believe the studies that suggest there is a real problem with project success or agree with Blair and Peters who suggest that we (project managers) are the problem, I think we need to look at what we do and how we do it and honestly ask ourselves, "Are we the problem?"

I've committed to do that. Lincoln said, "I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."

I think it's time to look at the process with fresh eyes and discover ways that we can become wiser and improve the way we manage projects to successful outcomes.