Proposed Addition To The PMBOK Guide Lexicon: Acuflammery

 

How did the phrase “Project Management acumen” become subjective? I mean, it shouldn’t be, and PMI® has published scholarship to prevent it from becoming so, but somehow the common usage of the term seems to be heading away from the objective. Consider this blurb on Business Acumen, from PMI®’s website:

Business Acumen: Professionals with business acumen understand the macro and micro influences in their organization and industry and have the function-specific or domain-specific knowledge to make good decisions. Professionals at all levels need to be able to cultivate effective decision-making and understand how their projects align with the big picture of broader organizational strategy and global trends.[i]

I especially appreciate the phrase “…need to be able to cultivate effective decision-making…” How does one objectively score “effective decision-making?” If the PM doing the decision-making consistently brings in projects on-time, on-schedule, I would say that qualifies. That being the case, why does it seem that so many consultants, paper presenters, and seminar hosts point to anything and everything other than the successful project completion win rate in their portfolios? Don’t misunderstand – I have nothing against citing college degrees and certifications to establish PM cred. But what happens when a bunch of degreed and certified PM “experts” disagree on a central (or multiple) tenet of PM science? I’ve often said in this blog that you can put fifty Project Managers in a room together, and they won’t agree on the color of an orange. Let me add to that the notion that, of the fifty, most will hold themselves to be experts, with the dissenters worrying about their upcoming PMP® certification exam.

Consider one of the primary, if not the primary, tools of the risk managers (no initial caps), the Monte Carlo Simulation. Without getting too technical, suffice to say that, of the risk analysis software packages I have used, they all involve getting data from Subject Matter Experts, and these data typically include (with the Project’s/Task’s/Control Account’s cost and schedule baseline as a “most likely” starting point):

• If things go really wrong, what would be the cost/schedule impact?
• What are the odds of the worst-case scenario unfolding?
• What about if things just go medium-wrong? What would the cost and schedule impact be then?
• What are the odds of that scenario occurring?
• What if everything goes well? Are there any savings in time or budget that could be realized?
• And what are the odds of that happening?

Sometimes the data collection/SME interview process will pull more data similar to the above, but this is typically the basic data set that they’ll use. The risk manager or risk analyst (neither gets initial caps) then feeds this “data” into the Monte Carlo Simulator, and dials up the number of “random” outcomes. The resulting analysis is used to inform the recommended size of the contingency budget, likely at-completion dates or costs, or even the amount to be considered in the poorly-defined “schedule contingency.” Should anybody challenge the veracity of these figures, the risk managers will often remind them that a Monte Carlo Simulation method was used, resulting in a chilling effect on any common sense-blessed PM from speaking up in the first place.

Here’s the problem with all this.

None – and I do mean none – of the bulleted data points can be known with any precision. The polled Subject Matter Experts are usually speculating and guessing when passing these parameters. As cool as “Monte Carlo Simulation” sounds, the selected processing method becomes irrelevant, since the data feed is essentially a collection of guesses. Now, risk managers will point to the necessity of using a stochastic method for this type of analysis. Funnily enough, the first definition of the word “stochastic” from Wordnik is “Of, relating to, or characterized by conjecture; conjectural.”[ii] “Statistics Involving or containing a random variable or process.” has to wait for the second definition.[iii]

And yet, it’s been my experience that a plurality (if not a majority) of risk managers and analysts pretend to the business acumen high ground, even though the analysis techniques they push on the PM Universe are weak, if not out-and-out flimflammery. Hence my request that we coin a new term, a combination of acumen and flimflammery, “acuflammery.” Since the PMBOK Guide® lexicon’s format is pretty plain, I’ll assert the definition in Merriam-Webster format (the term will make it that far sooner or later, so I may as well):

Acuflammery noun

accu flamm ery ‘a kyu flam er ee’

: an idea or concept, particularly in the Project Management domain, that has the appearance of legitimacy, but is, in fact, an unsound analysis technique.

Synonym: snake oil.

And I can assure you, dear readers, that this term is by no means confined to the risk managers.

[i] Retrieved from https://www.pmi.org/certifications/certification-resources/maintain/pmi-talent-triangle-update on May 27, 2023.

[ii] Retrieved from https://www.wordnik.com/words/stochastic on May 27, 2023, 21:56 MDT.

[iii] Ibid.