Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
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. |
Posted on: January 10, 2026 10:33 PM
| Permalink |
Comments (1)
How To Monetize PM
| Yeah, I know this blog’s title appears to be somewhat inconsistent with ProjectManagement.com’s December theme of philanthropy – in fact, it’s kind of the opposite, examining ways that PM can be used as a tool to attract funds rather than charitably dissipate them. But such funds can’t be charitably dissipated if they’re not available in the first place, so I will proceed. GTIM Nation is familiar with my assertion that, within a given organization, the demand for Project Management expertise can be highly cyclical, generally adhering to the following template: ·The young organization experiences an increase in the dollar value or visibility of its project portfolio, or a more mature org sees a significant overrun or late delivery. ·This prompts an awareness (for young organizations) or an urgency in advancing or recovering PM capability. ·New PM specialists are hired (or current PM-adjacent professionals trained), and put into their own organization, typically referred to as the Project Management Office, or PMO. ·Tools are selected for ascertaining cost and schedule performance, techniques for deriving scope, cost, and schedule baselines implemented, project review meetings scheduled, etc., etc. ·Areas where project performance is lacking get addressed by management, and, perhaps more importantly, projects that are doing fine get left alone by upper management, leading to an overall improvement in the cost and schedule performance of the portfolio. ·As the fears of experiencing a large overrun or late project delivery fade, some of the smaller projects (at first) will make the case that they do not need to use the cost/schedule performance systems that the larger projects use, nor should they have to participate in the project review meetings. ·The percentage of projects in the portfolio being covered by any type of valid cost/schedule performance measurement system continues to erode, along with the authority, influence, and budget of the PMO, until… ·One or more projects experiences a significant (or even catastrophic) overrun or late delivery, and the cycle begins again. Naturally such fluctuations in demand directly impact PMO morale, retention and staffing which, in turn, advances or contracts PM capability maturity. I used to work with one brilliant Project Controls Team Lead who would remind his charges “You never know, we could all be run out of here tomorrow!” Seasoned PMO Directors are well aware of this pernicious cycle, and will often attempt to implement strategies that will lessen its effects. One of the primary methods for attempting to place a “floor” underneath the cycle (i.e., limit the extent that the PMO loses its authority/budget in times of low demand) is to set the elements of the PMO’s business practices into official organizational policy or procedures. But here’s the problem with such attempts: projects are, by definition, unique. Procedures and requirements are, also by definition, designed to restrict the amount of latitude a given manager has in pursuing project objectives. Any procedural document with any oomph to it will almost certainly proscribe use of a managerial technique or strategy that’s appropriate for most of the projects within the portfolio, but not all of them (especially if there’s a requirement for doing risk management [no initial caps]). Sooner or later this appropriateness mismatch will be used to break through the “floor,” and the PMO will continue to hemorrhage relevance until the re-initiation of the cycle. How can this cycle be broken? I don’t have the definitive answer to that question, but I would like to offer some ideas, beginning with this: I don’t believe you can stop the cycle by publishing procedures, so that technique should be abandoned. I think that the preferrable approach is more like the way food is offered in a cafeteria. Let the PMs choose for themselves if they want or need thoroughly documented and approved baselines, Earned Value or Critical Path Methodologies employed, Baseline Change Control Boards formed, and so forth; or, very simple cost/schedule performance measurement systems, informal reviews, loose configuration management boundaries (e.g., Agile), etc. Many who will tap into the more robust PM techniques will be compelled to do so by their customers, others may simply seek the confidence that they will be given sufficient warning when a project disaster looms. Still others will either have legitimate reason to avoid an advanced PM implementation for their scope, or they may simply be too arrogant (or ignorant) to employ one, but that’s okay. The PMO Director’s job, in my opinion, is not to humble or inform the latter, and attempts to do so often lead to overreach and frustration. Simply make PM strategies, exhibits and techniques available to the owners of the scope – because we all know what will happen. Those projects in the portfolio that avail themselves of the PMO’s assistance will consistently out-perform their counterparts in cost and schedule results. Projects may very well experience overruns and delays, but at least the PMO-covered ones will be able to provide early warning. Project disasters are never welcome, but there’s just something about them arriving as a surprise that makes them particularly galling to the execs. Note that this analysis pertains only to the PMO within the macro-organization. The client organizations can issue procedures, guidance, and requirements to their heart’s content – it’s their money, after all. But if you want to monetize the PM application so that it attracts money, in my opinion, humbly offer it as a service – never push it as a mandate. |
Posted on: December 27, 2025 09:35 PM
| Permalink |
Comments (3)
Aligning Business Strategy 101
| Aligning your PMO’s business strategy would, at first glance, appear to be a relatively simple thing. Just get the projects within the portfolio doing a better job of PM-ing, and you’re there, right? Well, no, there’s a lot more going on, and this blog entry will help you evaluate some of the key factors in performing this key function. GTIM Nation will recall my oft-cited axiom: Quality, Affordability, Availability, pick any two. Meaning that, within any given industry, you will have customers who will tend to fall into the following categories: ·Those who insist on high quality, but want it at a good price, and are therefore willing to wait for it. ·Others who also want high quality, but are unwilling to wait, and so are willing to pay more for it. ·Customers on a budget, but still need it right away, and so are looking for a simple get-the-job-done solution. The clear implication here is that the first step in formulating a business strategy is to make an honest assessment of where your organization falls within this structure. In other words, with respect to your org’s competition, which of the above customer sets do you believe you appeal to the most? Keep in mind that, even though most project-based organizations are regularly involved in the Request For Proposal – Proposal Submission – Contract Award cycle, and the determining factor is typically the lowest bidder on a proposal that convinces the customer that that organization is capable of delivering the requested scope, the Affordability factor is not necessarily negated from the get-go. It’s not at all unusual for a client to award the contract to a well-known, reliable organization over a lower-bidding relative unknown, particularly if the work is high-priority or high-profile. With this structure in place, let’s now examine some of the common strategies that might be more appropriate for a given management environment than others. For example, take the first of the above bullets, an organization known for delivering high-quality output, at a competitive price. Quality, check, and affordability, check, leaving only availability. For most organizations in this bin, the indicated strategy is to treat the employees (talent) very well, keep the facilities in top-notch condition, and ignore the Asset Managers when they come around spouting that maximize-shareholder-wealth drivel. When this type of organization asserts that their most valuable asset is their people, they’re not blowing smoke. Their customers are willing to queue up for this particular good or service for a reason, so an emphasis on PM is clearly indicated, as well as an aversion to cost-cutters, or those who go on and on about Return on Investment. Those are Asset Managers’ strategies, and should not hold prominence in this type of organization. Next we have companies that attract customers also seeking high quality, but need it quickly, and are therefore willing to pay more for it. Again, as long as high quality is a draw, it must be maintained, meaning that your workforce must be more talented, your facilities as good or better, and your PM capability adequate, if not superior. As with the previous category, the threat here is that, should the executives listen to the Asset Managers’ cost-cutting strategies, the result, sooner or later, will be a lapse in quality or delivery. And make no mistake – any reduction in the cost of producing a given good or service has the potential to negatively impact on the quality (or availability) of that good or service. The line between cutting waste and cutting into productive capability is very fine, and often rather fuzzy. And, if a move to ostensively cut waste does impact scope delivery or quality, it usually ends up being recognizable only after the damage has been done, and customers have been lost. As we have seen, a robust PM capability is indicated in each of the two already-evaluated scenarios. Isn’t there any room for the Asset Managers? Well, yes, here in the situation where the good or service being provided is of low or middling quality, but is affordable and readily available. Since this customer base is attracted by lower prices, any opportunity to lower production or delivery costs will not only carry greater appeal, but is likely to make your competitors’ life more difficult. Some of the more, shall we say, unfortunate aspects of doing business in this particular niche is that your employees tend to be more interchangeable than the organizations that exist in the other two arenas, meaning that, while they may be more available, they will also not make as much in salary/benefits, and will be less likely to stick around if and when another opportunity presents itself. Also, this is the place where PM is less relevant, since customer satisfaction is less of a factor than in the other two environs. In summary, if your organization’s customer base falls into one of the first two bulleted situations above, go ahead and use the appropriate tools from the PMI® toolbox. Hire PMPs®, write Work Packages, employ Earned Value and Critical Path Methodologies. If, however, your org’s customer base is best described in the third bullet above, well, take it easy. Your organization isn’t that serious about PM, unless they are planning on making a play to appeal to one of the other bulleted scenarios. And these, GTIM Nation, are the basics of aligning your PMO’s business strategy with the rest of your organization. |
Posted on: December 22, 2025 09:25 PM
| Permalink |
Comments (0)
Santa Claus, PMP®
| GTIM Nation may be getting tired of my pushing back on the Asset Managers’ axiom, that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth,” but I think that many business model pathologies have their genesis in this notion. From the 1970s-era idea that “GM is in the business of making money, not cars,”[i] to having to endure those insufferable project portfolio analyses predicated on the Seeing as how ProjectManagement.com’s theme for December, philanthropy, fits nicely into the Holiday’s “Season of Giving” motif, I thought it would be fun to bring in an unlikely ally in exposing the moral and intellectual vacuousness of MSW: good ol’ Saint Nick himself. Now, I don’t take this approach lightly – some years back I was asked to review a PM-themed novel set at the North Pole, where Santa, preparing for his yearly present delivery run, was being left anonymous notes about the problems in his toy manufacturing apparatus. I really disliked it, and told the author as much. Never heard from him again. For the record, I will NOT be discussing the historical Saint Nicholas of Myra, but his extremely fanciful derivative character, the one who lives at the North Pole, and every Christmas Eve sets out in a flying reindeer-propelled sleigh to deliver toys to all the good boys and girls around the world. For just a moment I would like to invite GTIM Nation to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and remember a time when you believed the mythology surrounding Santa Claus, and think about all of the joy that brought to your young life. Now think of the character of Ebeneezer Scrooge, from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and the amount of frustration and grief he brings to those around him prior to his three-spirit-induced epiphany. Quite the contrast, no? But the basics of each one’s business model is easy to discern:Santa Claus amasses an enormous amount of assets (the toy industry in the United States alone is estimated at over $40B annually[ii]), only to dissipate them in their entirety, with absolutely no material recompense. I would argue that this places Santa firmly in the PMI® business model, since PM seeks to deliver on the customers’ expectations of Scope, Cost, and Schedule. Scope? It’s to bring joy, so, check. Cost? Santa’s visits are free (to the kids, anyway), so, check. Schedule? It all happens on Christmas Eve, so double-check. Scrooge, on the other hand, aggressively acts to maximize his wealth, as shown when he heatedly rejects the two gentlemen who come to ask for a donation to help London’s impoverished, and maintains such poor working conditions in his office that the badly-treated Bob Cratchett is refused in his request to add more coal to the cold rooms’ fireplace. Also, upon encountering the ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge tells him that he was “always a good businessman,” which could only be taken as true as long as the point of his business was not to bring happiness to others, which Marley’s ghost quickly (and emphatically) points out. Also consider what happens to Scrooge as he encounters the three spirits, Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet-to-Be. Does he become more attuned to maximizing Also consider the contrast between Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, and Bob Cratchett. Each are valuable members of their respective teams. But whereas Bob Cratchett is treated poorly by Scrooge himself, until after the visits of the three spirits, and then (and only then) Scrooge finally treats him better. Rudolph is also treated poorly, but by the other reindeer. It’s Santa himself who steps in to elevate Rudolph to the point position on the flying reindeer team, and he didn’t need supernatural intervention to convince him to do so. Finally, I can understand why PMI® might be reluctant to award an honorary Project Management Professional® certification to a quasi-fantasy/literary character, being a serious professional society and all. But compare and contrast what Santa does with the 2023 PMI Project of the Year Award Winner, Caterpillar: Prototype Battery Electric Large Mining Truck. This was, of course, a very impressive project. But I must point out that the Cat 793 XE Early Learner does not fly, nor is it known for bringing joy to millions of boys and girls around the globe by delivering toys. Consider also that, while there are over one million PMPs® across all of the continents, there are none hailing from the North Pole. For geographic diversity’s sake, Santa should qualify. For these reasons, I think PMI® should grant Santa Claus an honorary PMP®. Also, it will frustrate those who push that whole maximize shareholder wealth nonsense. [i] Retrieved from https://www.fi-magazine.com/311147/the-90s-called-they-want-their-presentations-back on December 8, 2025, at 18:23 MST. [ii] Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/topics/1108/toy-industry/ on December 8, 2025, at 18:46 MST). |
Posted on: December 10, 2025 10:10 PM
| Permalink |
Comments (2)
The PMO Attitude Litmus Test
| I think I’ve mentioned a couple of times in this blog about the time that I interviewed with a fairly young, mid-sized company with an opening for the lead of their Project Management Office (PMO), and how that interview went. A quick recap: I was already in a great position, but agreed to the interview because a friend of mine from a previous gig had begun working for this company, and thought I would be able to fix many of the problems they were facing. The interview was scheduled for the evening, after normal business hours, and I walked into a conference room occupied by around six or seven managers and engineers, and the head of their Human Resources department. The managers and engineers had some really good questions for me, and I answered to the best of my ability, but towards the end of the session the HR director took over. “Why do you want to work here?” she asked, rather sternly. “I’m not sure that I do. What about this organization makes it attractive, would you say?” I answered. While the managers and engineers appeared to be mildly surprised by my answer, the HR director looked to be positively furious. And so ended the interview. This wasn’t the first time I had encountered this kind of vibe from an organization that was interviewing me for a job. One time – again, at the behest of a good friend who had gone to work for a new company, and wanted me to join him – I flew out to the east coast for a job interview that took place over a weekend. As with the previous example, the first couple of rounds were with technical and managerial staff, but the last interaction was with their Human Resources manager. The technical and managerial staff posed some challenging questions, and I did my best to answer, but it was kind of different with the HR director. She spent much of our time together discussing the advantages of living in the area of that company’s branch office, and wrapped up that part of the discussion by saying “And, if you drive just one hour that way, you’ll see an actual mountain!” I smiled to myself, and she saw it. “What, they have mountains in New Mexico?” she demanded, incredulously. “Actually, my house sits one mile above sea level, and right out my back door is a mountain that stands another mile above sea level.” I never heard from that company again, not even to say they had selected another candidate. I probably shouldn’t have copped an attitude. Then again, I’m not sure that I would want somebody who doesn’t know eighth grade U.S. geography being in a position to influence my career trajectory. These two episodes (and several more besides) led me to the conclusion that organizations tend to view their existing employees (as well a prospective ones) in one of two ways. At one extreme is the notion that the employee/candidate is lucky to be working or considered for employment there, and at the other end of the scale, that the organization is lucky to have that employee/candidate as part of their team. Depending on where on this spectrum the organization in question lands, it can either drive or point to other characteristics of the current business culture. The first such manifestation has to do with the encouragement or discouragement of innovation. In organizations where the zeitgeist is that of you’re-lucky-to-be-here, innovation is not just discouraged, I’ve actually seen it punished. Loyalty to the existing management structure is the coin of the realm here, and any challenge to their stated (or even unstated) technical agenda, no matter how insightful or sincerely brought, is typically seen as disloyal. Conversely, in organizations that view their employees as true assets, the tendency is to be more willing to listen to the outlandish, the fanciful, or even bordering on unbelievable, because often times the brilliant is hiding in there, somewhere, and those generating such ideas will only continue to do so if they are comfortable doing so. Alert GTIM Nation members probably caught the reference to employees being a “true asset.” The whole our-employees-are-our-greatest-asset sub-narrative is so ubiquitously present in official mission statements and other corporate self-referencing documents that it may as well have its own keystroke on the public affairs team’s keyboards. But if the organization is of the mind that its employees are lucky to be there, then those same employees will recognize that any such assertion is patently false, no matter how often or forcefully repeated. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, as they say, and before you can say “our employees are our greatest asset,” nobody believes anything coming from these people’s mouths or keyboards. The free flow of information is the life blood of the organization, it’s been said, but now that life blood is tainted, and there’s no going back. For these (and many other) reasons, any organization – PMOs included – that manifests an attitude towards its employees that they are lucky to be there, is likely to fail, sooner or later. If you happen to be in such a PMO, well, I’m sorry. If you direct such a PMO, check the beliefs that drive attitude. Before it’s too late. |
Posted on: November 28, 2025 10:12 PM
| Permalink |
Comments (1)