I’m the fourth of five children, so I know first-hand what a pain older siblings can be. Since they’re older, they tend to have a significant physical edge, at least until puberty comes along, meaning that, if any conflict turns into an actual scuffle, they will almost always win. The outcome of any confrontation was virtually guaranteed to not be decided in my favor, no matter the merits of my position. Some other burdens of having multiple older siblings, at least in my observation, include:
- When the parents go out for the evening, the oldest sibling remaining at home was “in charge.” Fascinating how being temporarily “in charge” bestows on an older sibling the ability to utterly change the foods that may be consumed, television shows that may be watched, or even bed times.
- Prior to even considering buying new clothes, any and all potential hand-me-downs must be evaluated and proven utterly unworkable before such purchase and, no, failing to fit properly is not an accepted reason for committing to new clothes purchases.
- Want to “ride shotgun” (meaning to occupy the family car’s front passenger seat if one of the parents isn’t in the car)? Forget it. Even “calling shot gun” first isn’t usually accepted if you aren’t the oldest travelling child in this situation.
- Statistically, only- and oldest-children tend to perform highest academically, and a strong majority of Nobel Prize winners are either only or oldest children. Why does this matter? Ask anyone who’s been there what happens when you present your report card to your parents, and it is notably inferior to your older siblings’ when they were at that grade level.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m not complaining at all. I perceive all of my older siblings as wonderful, brilliant people, for reasons which I’m sure will come to me. But they do tend to tilt life’s playing field before you even have a chance to run down the access tunnel.
Meanwhile, Back In The Product Project Management World…
Many Management Science historians will trace the genesis of Project Management to Product Management, as originally developed (formally, at least) by Proctor & Gamble, in 1931[i]. The “51331” memo, penned by Neil McElroy, proposed a new management role for a “brand man,” the person who would be responsible, not for the processes involved in creating a given product, but for the product itself.[ii] This shift in managerial focus would (obviously) have many long-term effects, eventually bringing about its ideological sibling, Project Management. So, having this sort of genesis is totally cool, right? We’re all just one big, happy Management Science branch of the same family, right?
Well, no.
For starters, Product Management is largely free of, in my opinion, the deadliest foe of Project Management, namely, scope creep. Products are what they are: if the consumer wishes to buy it, they will, and if they don’t, they won’t. It’s that simple. On the other hand, Project’s Scope Baselines describe something that has yet to come into existence. If the customer is paying a contractor for this to-be-realized scope, and it doesn’t look like what the customer intended, the contractor can be pulled in to court for remedy. And, if something changes with respect to the original understanding of the scope, the contractor has to write, submit, and hope to have approved Baseline Change Proposals (BCPs). Clearly there’s no equivalent in the Product Management side of things, due to the aforementioned take-it-or-leave-it character of the transaction(s). So, while a staggering number of Projects fail due to Scope Creep, our older theoretical siblings, the Product Managers, end up looking great by comparison, since they never have to deal with that particular business model pathology.
Then there’s the whole deal on how Project Managers (typically) attract business as compared to Product Managers. Consumers in free market economies can kvetch endlessly about television commercials and other forms of mass marketing, but the fact of the matter is that such promotions pay for an awful lot of (if not the majority of) produced entertainment. Project Managers, on the other hand, usually must assemble a proposal team to address a Request for Proposal (RFP), which is characteristically awarded to the organization that can convince the client that their Team can deliver the requested scope for the lowest price of any of the RFP respondents. Besides this anxiety-producing aspect of the business-attracting function, in the contractor organizations I’ve worked, the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on the Proposal Team are rarely paid for their time. These are expected to put in free overtime after they’ve worked their current Projects, since their time can’t be charged directly, and indirect accounts are highly scrutinized and seldom lavishly-funded.
“Mom always liked you best!” was Tommy Smother’s famous line to his (actually, younger) brother Dick. I’d like to adapt it to Project Management’s ideological older sibling, Product Management, thus: The Business World treats you better than it treats us!
[i] Retrieved from https://mspm.cmu.blogs.elliance.com/2020/05/13/51331-the-origins-of-product-management/ on May 24, 2025.
[ii] Ibid.
