Don Kim
PROJECT-TO-PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT EXPERT| Seeking opportunities
Sacramento, CA, United States
A quite heated discussion got spawned on a Yahoo group and I noticed a thread on this site also discussed this heatedly. I think project management is a "growing" about to be profession and that the PMP certification is the best first step towards this.
Below is an excerpt from the discussion:
--- In [email protected], "Dr. Paul D. Giammalvo, PMP, CCE" wrote:
This hypothesis was born out by my own PhD dissertaion, which followed up on research done by Bill Zwerman, Janet Thomas et al, and funded in part by PMI. In Zwerman's research (which was published by PMI) they concluded "Project management is not now, nor is it likely in the near future, to qualify as
a profession".
Though I think the above statement is a bit too strong, you do definitely bring up some valid points. In the final analysis, if I were pressed to provide a more valid definition of project management, I guess I'd say its not a "profession" in the strict sense as doctor, lawyer, or engineer is, but is more a discipline that is a sub discipline of the overall profession we know as "Management".
For example, I have recently seen the increase of project management as a specialization of certain MBA programs, and MBA programs are generally known for developing individuals who will go on to work in the profession of business management. And in general, it is widely held notion that a person who has acquired the general knowledge of business administration and management taught in MBA programs, would be able to apply this knowledge to any industry, since the general practices have been proven to be valid irrespective of the industry to which it is applied to (e.g., marketing, accounting, finance, etc. would be readily applicable whether the business is selling hamburgers or silicon chips).
In addition, though I am no historian in this subject, my feeling is that prior to the acceptance of these principles, that most people who were promoted into a general management position, usually proved themselves highly capable in some technical area, got promoted to start managing people in that particular technical area, and moved higher up till they became what we would typically know as executive managers.
I would imagine that a couple things happened, 1) people throughout industries found that what managers were doing, were similar throughout industries, and 2) the way they were applying them were erratic and unsystematic. No doubt college and universities caught on to this, and developed programs to teach a unified approach to the profession of management.
Likewise, a similar event is occurring in the project management (still developing) profession or discipline to be more strict to modern definitions. ;) Any project management text will tell you in the introduction that the field as we know it started probably during the development of the "Manhattan Project" and later grew from the defense field to engineering and construction.
But I would say it was the last 10-15 years that the trajectory for the growth of project management has really come to fruition. It was the rise of Information Technology and the need to manage projects to set up IT infrastructure and departmental projects that has really given prominence to the importance of managing projects well.
And when you look at the parallels to how general management techniques developed, it is quite striking. Most everyone who are project managers were people who displayed high technical competence, and once they reach the peak of their technical abilities (which is typically pretty fast in IT/software), they were usually promoted to the role of "project manager".
Likewise, because of this some pretty big problems occurred: 1) Project Mangers were not applying well know principles and methodologies (if they apply any at all) to their projects; 2) Just because someone exhibits excellent technical skills, does not automatically translate to good management skills; 3) Finally, the demand for training in project management best practices and methodologies were born and is growing.
To me, the PMI and the PMP certification process is currently the most widely accepted and most unified development into turning project management into a "profession" or discipline that I've seen to date.
Will project management ever reach the status of a true profession? I think it might, and developments such as PMI's PMP to me is a good first step.
This does not mean it is without problems. All the issues this thread has pointed out are all valid, and in addition, to me, the PMBOK is still mired in the old serial, command and control linear movement assumption of managing more traditional engineering and construction projects, and is not agile enough for the kinds of fast moving high tech products and services being built today (On this note, the PMBOK does acknowledge that not requirements are know up front and do emphasize progressive elaboration or "rolling wave" planning. A aspect the Agile/Scrum evangelist always miss when bashing PMBOK).
Thus I welcome anything that helps with the development of project management which I'm engaged with on a daily basis, to be one day held in regard to a "profession" in the strict sense of the term.
What do you all think?
-Don Kim
www.donkim.info
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