Is PM Really Just A Fad?

The short answer to the question in the title is no, of course not; however, I believe that there is a real danger that the codex we embrace as advanced practitioners of Project Management might be susceptible to a similar erosion of its acceptance across the management sciences realm, and that we as a PM community ought to do something to prevent that from happening. For GTIM Nation regulars who may take umbrage at my title, along the lines of “If you knew the answer to be ‘no,’ why did you pose the question? You didn’t do it for cheap clicks, did you?” I have this to say: also, no. If I was going for cheap clicks, I would have entitled this blog entry “Read This Blog, Or A Tarantula Will Bite Your Face.” Now, on to the fad problem.
The Financial Times had an article back in 2013, entitled “Where Others Failed: Top 10 Fads.”[i] Number 9 on this list is “Matrix Management.” I believe the author is in error here, as she mis-characterizes Matrix Management, and then goes on to disparage it. In organizations with considerable Project work, Matrix Management simply differentiates between the organization’s human resources (Asset Management), and its Projects’ demands (Project Management). It allows PMs to pursue delivering scope on-time, on-budget, while leaving issues about whether or not the engineers have sufficient certifications to the head of that pool of human resources. But author Lucy Kellaway[ii] didn’t check with me before Matrix Management made it to her list of “fads,” so there it is.
To be sure, some of the entries on this list I hold to be spot-on. Her assessment of the number 3 entry, Six Sigma, is chillingly accurate. Kellaway’s assessment centers on the overly complex techniques used by the “green belts” and “black belts,” and deservedly so. And yet, in my opinion even here she kind of misses the point. Six Sigma, the Quality Managers’ sensational push into overarching corporate culture, does not apply to everybody. Recall my oft-cited axiom Quality, Affordability, Availability: pick any two. For those organizations that have staked out market share in the Affordable and Available niche, a sudden embrace of Quality is absolutely not indicated, even if the majority of highly-placed and massively influential executives and academics hold it to be the thing to do.
And yet Six Sigma / Quality Management’s sudden rise and elongated decline provides an interesting model on how management fads experience sudden contagion, peak, plateau, and finally recede to the place approximately it had previously occupied in the management sciences realm. Motorola was its notable pioneer, in the late 1980s, followed closely by Honeywell, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and General Electric[iii]. About the same time Congress created a really cool national award dedicated to Quality, the Malcolm Baldridge Award. But as General Electric’s powerful influence on the universe of the Management Sciences began to wane in the early 2000s, so did Six Sigma’s popularity. Part of this loss of popularity was due, in my (and other’s) opinion, to an influx of consultants eager to push its precepts without a genuine understanding of its actual function, attempting to force its principles wayyyyy beyond products, and into processes and services where it really didn’t belong. Also, according to an article by Oliver Staley in QZ.com,
It didn’t help that Six Sigma has no owner, accreditor, or even a commonly agreed upon body of knowledge.[iv]
Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…
Quality was one of the eight major sections in the original PMBOK Guide®, considered integral to the overall PM process, and consuming an eighth of the questions on the PMP® Certification exam (at least when I took it. My PMP® number is 1004, so it was a while back). Which all leads us back to the question, could the same rapid-adaption, peak/plateau, and loss of widespread acceptance cycle hit PM?
I think we already have one of the two causal elements in place, where consultants and content providers pushing PM without a robust understanding of its proper place within overall business model development/maintenance are influencing the macro conversation. (This was, incidentally, the theme of my very first keynote speech, at a PM conference in Silicon Valley, that there are “charlatans” amongst us, and we should work to weed them out.) Typically, these can be readily identified by the way they make their assertions, in the “eat your peas”-style hectoring tone.
But the other causal element behind Six Sigma’s demise is notably absent from PM. We do, indeed, have a universally-recognized accreditor, AND a body of knowledge, and have had for some time.
Will the anchors of the PMBOK Guide® and PMP® accreditation be sufficient to prevent authors for business or management magazines of the future from declaring PM a fad? It should. And, if it doesn’t, then a tarantula should bite that author on the face.



[i] Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/3c7f1e40-a03e-11e2-88b6-00144feabdc0 on January 7, 2026, 19:02 MST.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Retrieved from https://www.qualitygurus.com/history-of-six-sigma/ on January 8, 2026, 18:30 MST.
[iv] Retrieved from https://qz.com/work/1635960/whatever-happened-to-six-sigma on January 8, 2026, 18:51 MST.