Pragmatic Value of PMI-funded Research?

Splendid capture, Sephane, of the problem I see...'Happy Hunting.' PMI seems to be a collector of information/products that might work for PMs and leaves it up to them to connect the dots.
By the way, PMI Standards and associated publications aren't based upon rigorous research, rather they reflected the consensus opinion of those volunteers assembled ad hoc to share their experience. Maybe that's an area where PMI can improve.
PMJ is interesting and the research work funded there can be useful but I just don't sense that there is much in the way of a systematic inquiry of the discipline of PM. For what it's worth.
Thanks for your note.

Luis, I agree contexts...as reflected in megatrends...are important. But are they really essential to being a competent PM? Where do you draw the line as to what's in and what's out of the 'discipline/profession' of PM? And if PMI doesn't want to do that then fine, but it should be clear to members and other stakeholders that it doesn't invest in continuous-improvement theory building, nor are there ingrained measures for validity and reliability checking to support all the ideas, concepts, definitions, products, and practices PMI seems to at least tacitly support.
There seems to be room for improvement.

Dear Paul
Your questions are interesting
Do you know any good project managers who are not aware of the context in which their project is being implemented?
Regarding the profession itself.
PMI has created a content repository (continuously "fed") that allows the consultation of various topics strictly related to the PMIstandards+ in the profession.
If you are a member:
- Has access to this community, Projectmanagement.com
- Receive weekly information about PMI Picks™
- You can consult, whenever you wish, the PMI website and access new content relevant to the profession, such as the recent "Process Groups: A Practice Guide"
I take this opportunity to ask you if you know how the PMBOK Guide was conceived and created? (reference guide for all project management professionals)

I am convinced that if Paul wants to contribute to the project management profession, he can do so by submitting Scientific papers on topics related to the profession.

Yes, Luis, I do know about the origins and development of the PMBOK Guide. I had the opportunity to participate in the Standards Program for several years in various volunteer roles.

Thanks, Thomas...good points.
Like you, I've seen no business case for PMI research. But should it appear, I'd look for measures of value around several facets. Just for starters we'd want to see measurements of commitment to building and reaffirming of the realities of the discipline, where a complete story 'as-of-date x' is accessible. This story could be measured on its solid evidence supporting/confirming/modifying the basic assumptions and principles seen as underpinning the discipline, longitudinally investigated and reported. We'd want to see PMI integrating, interpreting, and reporting those findings...the good, the bad, and the ugly...regularly. Accompanying this reporting would have to be member/partner satisfaction surveys with the research in terms of contributing to better personal/local efficiencies/results/benefits. Also, satisfaction could reflect perceptions of value that PMI makes bona fide, credible effort to continuously understand and improve the profession/discipline for the betterment of human enterprise.
I'd caution, however, that this work would require PMI to have a full-time capability/capacity that didn't rely primarily on the revolving door of volunteer 'expertise'.
If PMI wanted to commit to such a research program that would be able to communicate the 'state-of-the-art' of the profession/discipline....including unknowns...at any time, I'm sure other measurements of value could be found.
In the spirit of continuous improvement.....:)

I would say that rather than a belief system, PM is an application of general systems theory to business endeavors. Since GST may be applied broadly to many domains which include interactions of things, the PMBoK it is an amalgamation of concepts borrowed from or developed in conjunction with many sciences, some quantitative such as accounting, and others qualitative like aspects of human behavior.

That makes it difficult to pin down what the value is. For one, the value may have various components, some directly measurable and others not. Then there is the philosophical debate of whether benefits are derived from PM or the underlying knowledge domains it employs. "This isn't a benefit of PM, but rather of applied psychology..."

In the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author develops a mental illness trying to develop an a priori definition of "quality". Modern scientific approaches to modeling complex systems such as a business, employ fuzzy logic to compare them since when comparing things like financial results and social impacts, the lines are not crystal clear.

Thomas (and Keith),
All good points about belief systems and GST. Describing human business-oriented activities is no doubt harder than, for example, discerning, understanding, and agreeing upon physical properties in nature. Yet, it seems that PMI as a professed authority on PM should be working diligently to identify, understand, and explain the perceived 'perversions', slippery value measures, and 'unclear lines.'
Asking too much, do you think?