Two Sure-Fire PM Technology Advances!

 

In previous posts I’ve made the distinction between the two types of Project Management experts one comes across these days: the Performers and the Processors. In evaluating the effects of ever-improving technology on the PM field, I think it’s prudent to break out such advances based on these two very different types of consumers.

For the Performers, this is a pretty easy analysis. You see, Performers don’t care too much about following overreaching policies or guidance documents. They really just care about delivering their projects on-time, on-budget, to the client’s satisfaction. This being the case, the PM information technology that will interest them the most involves the Project Controllers’ ability to put into their hands the timely, accurate, and relevant information needed to attain that end. Assuming my bifurcation of the PM world is accurate, that means that the most valuable tool that the Performers could have would be a kind of PM Information Nonsense Detector. Such a tool would be very useful indeed when those Processors whom have (unfortunately) attained some level of organization authority begin to harp on about how the Performers “need” to have more stakeholder engagement, or a more robust risk management plan. The PM Information Nonsense Detector could then emit one of a variety of pre-selected sounds, including:

• A ring tone, like a cell phone would make. This would give the Performing PM an opportunity to pretend to pick up the PMIND as if it was a phone, and say something like “Hey, Ted. Yeah, you’ll never guess what the so-called experts from corporate want me to do this time!”
• A pre-recorded laugh track, hopefully one that includes laughter that’s clearly derisive.
• A recording of a voice very similar to the Lost In Space’s robot’s, saying “Danger! Danger! Absurd ideas being furthered!”
• An ear-splitting siren, followed by a female voice (similar to Siri) saying “Sorry, I simply can’t suffer fools gladly.”

While all this is going on, the PMIND searches the web for specific refutations to the nonsense currently being rendered. For example, if the risk management types are pushing their agendas, the PMIND would provide valuable quotes from Douglas W. Hubbard’s excellent book The Failure of Risk Management, or maybe even past Game Theory in Management blog entries.

What If We Make Them Mad?

I’m happy to provide the idea for this device to ProjectManagement.com and my readers, since I’m confident it will make a mint. For those of you who readily recognize that innovative, technically-advanced products that make a lot of money for their manufacturers also incur the wrath of those whose approach to PM is so full of folly that it provides the impetus for the demand for such a product, do not worry. We’re talking Processors here. Let’s say that, as the demand and profit margin for the PMIND soars, its patent owner(s) receive one of those threatening letters composed of letters cut out of newspapers and magazines. The response should be something like “We are in receipt of your letter threatening us if we continue to market and sell the PMIND, thereby rendering almost all of your insipid conference paper presentations and guidance-generating activities plainly absurd. Prior to full compliance with your demands to cease and desist, we have one request: given the volume of such threatening letters we receive, could we impose on you to settle on a specific format for these missives? For example, the difference in the size of the font in the cut-out letters between the “u” and “f” in the second word of the third sentence, “suffer,” is so dramatic as to render the whole sentence – and therefore your essential message – virtually unreadable. If you could simply agree to a procedure that would stipulate a mean font size consistency in cut-out letters in threatening communications, it would be much easier to implement your demands.” I can guarantee you that the Processors behind the threats will then immediately convene to discuss your request and appoint a panel to further explore the basis for generating the procedure. This panel, after many heated arguments, will finally deliver a rough outline for the procedure, where it will go to some sort of “governing committee,” who will review the outline, and make recommendations prior to the commissioning of the actual writing committee. The whole lot of them will engage in this kind of behavior ad infinitum, never getting around to actually carrying out their threats.

I Haven’t Forgotten The Opposition!

For the Processors, have I got a technology advance for you too! This device, the Process Implementation Gadget, or PIG, will inflict irritation, frustration, or even pain on those Performers who refuse to obey your arbitrary and capricious speculations well-thought-out guidance on how PM should be done. It works like this: whenever you encounter a Performer PM, the PIG will search the General Ledger for the cost accounts she is responsible for. It then searches those projects’ stored documents for things like a risk management plan, or a Lean Six Sigma Quality Control Plan, or a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy statement, or….well, you get the picture. Should the PIG fail to find any of these documents in the record, or, having found such a document, recognizes it as mostly boilerplate, it automatically sends an e-mail to that PM’s line manager, and that person’s line manager, and so on up the organization chain, with the message that the offending PM is not in compliance with the organization’s arbitrary and capricious speculations well-thought-out guidance on how PM should be done. You’ll be able to cause these PM renegades so much grief that they will gladly engage you, and allow you access to their charge codes, just to get you to sign off on whatever waiver they need to make you go away. Everyone wins! You can then go and brag about how your honorable intervention was the proximate cause of that Performer’s subsequent success at various PM seminars!

I look forward to the day that a project kickoff meeting has both PMINDs and PIGs at the ready as the strategic approach to the given project is assessed and designed, just to see which invention carries the day. I know which one I’m rooting for.