PM Career Advancement – Why Is It Different?

 

No discussion of career advancement within Project Management (ProjectManagement.com’s theme for March) would be complete without an at least cursory compare-and-contrast exercise with the nominal career trajectory of our friends, the accountants. What pops to the surface of this cursory examination is the obvious fact that these two nominal career paths are very different, even though in each case we’re talking about bringing to the macro-organization a certain level of business expertise in matters ranging from the picayune (should we rent or buy the copier? Which estimating method should be used in deriving the Cost Baseline?) all the way to the future-defining (which indirect projects should be funded this year? Which projects in the portfolio represent the macro-organization’s core capabilities?).

I think the central reason that the Asset Managers’ nominal career trajectory is so different from the typical PM practitioner’s has to do with the fact that the general ledger is the system of record when it comes to determining how much tax revenue is due to the government. That’s the reason that all licensed businesses are required to have a general ledger before they can conduct any actual business. Compare this to the fact that, for the most part, even large project-oriented businesses are completely free to either embrace the tenets of PM as articulated by PMI® (or any of the other organizations promoting its practices), or to eschew them altogether. Granted, those organizations that do resist the precepts of PM are far more likely to fail, earlier rather than later, but the fact remains that they are still entirely able to ignore the PMBOK Guide® if they so desire. No such leeway is granted for the creation and maintenance of the general ledger. Conducting business without one can (and almost certainly will) lead to the arrest and imprisonment of the managers responsible. Can GTIM Nation imagine how the business world would be different, if PM was the law of the land, and it was the Asset Managers who had to convince the management universe of the efficacy of their information systems? Conventional wisdom would bestow axiomatic status to the assertion “The point of all management is to deliver the customers’ expectations on-time, on-budget,” and to hint that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth” would get one laughed out of the faculty lounges in business schools across the land (hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?).

The point here is, as long as there are governments keen on collecting tax revenue from businesses (essentially, forever), there’s going to be a baseline-level of demand for those who have a talent for creating and maintaining those types of information systems, i.e., accountants. We PM-types are left on our own, to seek out and support those organizations on the lookout for a competitive advantage when it comes to delivering scope on-time, on-budget. “But Michael!” I can hear GTIM Nation say, “That’s also a forever business environment! There will always be companies seeking such an advantage!” True, but, as pointed out earlier, those organizations that eschew PM won’t go to jail for it. And falling behind on Project cost and schedule performance can take time to become obvious to the clientele writ large.

Here, again, is an example of why the Asset Manager’s career path is different from the typical PM practitioner. If, at month-end close, the books don’t balance, the accountant/CFO has clearly erred. Conversely, if, at the project review meeting, a PM is showing an out-of-threshold negative cast and schedule variance, he has an opportunity via the Variance Analysis Report to accurately explain why … or to obfuscate, deflect, and deny the bad news in front of everyone’s eyes. Essentially, the accountants’ mistakes are clear, direct, and reliably quantifiable. The PM’s mistakes can be obscure, circuitous, and imprecisely quantifiable (hence the need for Variance Analysis Thresholds).

With that kind of space between timely, accurate, and certain evaluation parameters and eventual PM reward (or comeuppance) being established, non-merit-based operators have all they need to move upward in the macro-organization’s PMO at the expense of the most talented. Only the long view, at the portfolio level, will reveal which PMs consistently bring in their scope on-time, on-budget, and even that is contingent on a broad-based Earned Value Management System (EVMS) that keeps track of all of the projects’ actual performance.

But EVMSs aren’t required. General Ledgers are. I think that’s the main reason why the career advancement of PMs is usually more uneven than that of the Asset Managers’/accountants’. All this having been conceded, I must admit that I kind of prefer the uneven trajectory. It keeps things from getting boring.