Virtual PM – It’s Virtually Everywhere

 

What is project management, really? Yes, yes, I know there are definitions aplenty out there, but I think they can all be summarized as:

Project management is the smart way of pursuing and attaining a specified goal.

If you believe that this definition is overly broad, consider that I can still differentiate project management from asset and strategic management under this definition, since asset management can be defined as attaining a desired goal while consuming or using the fewest assets, and strategic management can be defined as attaining desired goals better than the others who also seek those goals.

Soooo … is project management virtually everywhere? Well, a lot of people pursue and attain their objectives in less-than-smart ways, but, sure, PM is everywhere, even if it’s not recognized as such. Think about the two main information streams that support smart project management decision-making: earned value, and critical path methodologies. Sound daunting, don’t they? Well, they’re not. Follow me on this little mental exercise for proof.

You’re the project manager on an effort to – oh, I don’t know, pick a scope statement – and you’ve just been informed by your accountant (hisssss!) that you have spent half of your budget. What’s the first thought that pops into your head? Is it not, “Am I half-finished?”? Guess what – you just performed an earned value cost performance analysis! And you didn’t even mean to! And, once you’ve answered that question, the next one is almost as automatic: “Was I supposed to be half done at this point?” Now look what you’ve done! An earned-value-based schedule performance analysis!

I know what you’re thinking: Okay, Michael, you got us on the virtual simplicity of earned value analysis (although we’re still a little sore at the EV purists who insist on all those added trappings). But critical path methodology is a completely different animal! That stuff’s complicated! Have you ever tried to drive some of those critical path method software packages?

But critical path is actually just more of the same – it just deals with having to do some things before you can start on others. For example, to prevent my home steam cleaner from being overwhelmed by strands of fur emanating by the ton from my 117-pound Collie (how does a 117-pound Collie shed tons of fur? You got me, brother, but it happens) and being scolded at length by the steam cleaner repairman, I have to vacuum immediately prior to steam-cleaning. So, if I allocate 30 minutes for vacuuming, and an hour for steam cleaning, I should be done in an hour and a half, right? (Wait! Did I just perform a forward pass on my schedule network?) Well, first I have to turn the vacuum over and pull Collie fur from the brushes. And, since the Collie himself needs to be brushed (constantly), I may as well do that first, so that the machines can pick up whatever fur I don’t collect from the brush and throw away. Already the preceding activity – vacuuming – has been set back at least 10 minutes. Since I have to finish vacuuming before I can start steam-cleaning, I’ve slipped my scheduled finish time of cleaning the floors by 10 minutes. Woah! I just pulled status and re-calced my finish time! Finally, if my hour-and-a-half target was pretty firm, I could talk my wife into steam-cleaning each room as soon as I’ve vacuumed it, meaning that, after the first room has been vacuumed, both machines are running concurrently. By doing so, I’ve “crashed the schedule.”

And yet, there’s often a strong negative connotation associated with the terms Earned Value, Critical Path, Forward Pass, Pull Status, and Crash the Schedule, even though, as our little mental exercise has shown, these terms are just part and parcel of pursuing even pedestrian goals with a little forethought. Shouldn’t our larger endeavors receive no less? And, by doing so, haven’t we “done” project management, no matter how inadvertently?

So, yeah, virtual project management is virtually everywhere.