Super PMO To The Rescue!

 

Within the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) there are a wide variety of villains, but then, there would have to be, right? I mean, if you are to introduce a character with super-human abilities, it would be rather disappointing if that character were to, say, use their amazing powers to ensure people used the correct recycling bins. No, the antagonists in these stories must have the following characteristics:

• Unmistakable evil intent,
• …impacting either (a) a few loved ones, or (b) millions of randos (or both), and
• Some advanced capability that renders them invulnerable to nominal law enforcement, i.e., they have a super power too.

Now, some of these villains, while having an advanced capability, aren’t really impervious to traditional law enforcement techniques. “Doctor Octopus,” a.k.a. Dr. Octavius from Spider Man II (2004) has infused onto his spine four robotic arms, alternately directed by him and by an artificial intelligence mechanism that’s part of the arms. While there’s no question that these arms make Dr. Octavius formidable, they don’t make him, well, bullet-proof, and hand guns are pretty much the universal weapon of American constabulary. Nevertheless, it falls to Spider Man himself to thwart the Doctor’s reckless plans. At the other end of the spectrum is “Thanos,” from The Avengers: Infinity War (2018), who, with a single act (“The Blip”), wipes out at random half of all living things in the universe[i] (not the galaxy, mind you, but the universe. As a point of reference, NASA’s 2016 estimate of the number of galaxies in the observable universe is 200 billion[ii]). How could one describe such a villain? As a super, super, super villain? An omni villain?

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

While the typical new PMP® certification holder is not given to changing wardrobe in order to include skin-tight, brightly-colored costumes, there is a subtle but clear mandate to oppose – extremely powerful criminals? No, shoddy management practices, no matter how deeply entrenched in your organization, nor how widely-accepted they are in the business world. As GTIM Nation is well aware, some of my favorite Super Management Villains (SMVs) include:

• The notion that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth,”
• The overuse of Return on Investment,
• risk management (no initial caps),
• The idea that PMs should “engage all stakeholders,”
• The “bottoms-up” Estimate at Completion,

…among others. But today I want to make the case for distinguishing between actual Project performance, and the Management Information Systems (MISs) that measure Project performance, and why this distinction matters in the realm of combatting PM supervillains.

Let’s step back, and take the 35,000 foot view of Project Management. From this perspective, what’s the point of PM? If you said “to help ensure that projects are brought in on-time, on-budget,” go to the head of the class. How does PM writ large accomplish this? By showing how to set up the Management Information Systems that allow actual Project Managers to know where to devote their limited time and energy, towards problems that represent barriers to accomplishing the scope on-time, on-budget, and away from those areas of project execution that are going just fine without the additional attention. I want to reiterate this distinction, because it’s important: the PMI®s, ProjectManagement.coms, and all PM-oriented academe do not exist to make decisions for the PM; rather, they exist to help the actual PM know what they need to make better, if not absolutely optimal decisions.

So here’s how we can start identifying our SMVs. Know that the ones who are interfering with the nominal PM’s decisions, while certainly villains, are not the super variety we’re after. This is Dr. Octopus-level management villainy. Lack of managerial latitude in executing decisions is an organizational behavior and performance issue. What will lead to the switching on of the ProjectManagement.com searchlight/signal (actually, that’s an awful lot to put on a spotlight/projector. Let’s stick with PMI®) is going to be those pseudo-management techniques and practices that not only fail to inform our nominal PM person, but will actually consume time, energy, and resources to deliver irrelevant, or even misleading information streams, increasing the odds of poor decisions being made, and steering the so-afflicted projects towards delays and overruns. To the extent that these poorly-formulated techniques generating marginally useful information streams become entrenched and commonly accepted within the macro PM community, they become more and more difficult to overturn. Worse, should they become so identified with the nominal PMO that typical executives are no longer able to differentiate between valid and invalid PM techniques and practices, we’re looking at a scale of management knavery that could have a profound negative impact on …, well, not the universe. I’ll confine my alarmism to the arena of management science.

What’s to stop all this from happening? That depends. Your butler just came into your study, and has called your attention to the PMI® signal (with or without the “®”) high above the city’s skyscrapers. What are you going to do now?

[i] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blip on April 17, 2023, 21:20 MDT.

[ii] Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-reveals-observable-universe-contains-10-times-more-galaxies-than-previously-thought on April 16, 2023, 1500 MDT.