I wanted to open up a discussion on something that comes up constantly in our profession but rarely gets talked about directly: intellectual integrity — plagiarism, copyright, and proper attribution in project management work.
We are a field built on shared knowledge. Frameworks, templates, case studies, lessons learned — we borrow, adapt, and build on each other's work constantly, and that is part of what makes PM communities valuable. But it also creates gray areas. Reusing a well-known framework is normal professional practice. Presenting someone else's case study, slide deck, or original research as your own is not. The hard part is everything in between.
I would love to hear how this community thinks about it — as authors, speakers, researchers, and conference participants.
A few questions to get us started:
- Where is the line? So much of PM is "common practice" — RACI charts, risk registers, Agile ceremonies. When does using a standard framework need a citation, versus being treated as shared professional vocabulary everyone draws on?
- Speaker responsibility. If you are presenting at a chapter event, PMO summit, or webinar, what do you feel you owe in terms of crediting the origin of a model, case study, or slide — even in an informal setting?
- Institutional pressure. Has anyone experienced pressure to present someone else's work as your own — for example, being asked to deliver a "thought leadership" talk built from a report a colleague actually wrote?
- AI-generated content. With AI now drafting charters, risk assessments, even conference abstracts, how should we think about attribution when the underlying "author" is a model trained on other people's work?
- Cross-cultural norms. Attribution expectations are not uniform across regions or organizations. How should global project teams navigate knowledge-sharing when norms around credit differ?
- Accountability. When uncredited reuse or plagiarism surfaces in a professional setting — a conference paper, a workshop, an internal case study — what should happen? Should there be a PM equivalent of academic misconduct review?
Looking forward to hearing how others navigate this — especially anyone who had to make a judgment call in real time (e.g., editing a slide before a talk, or reviewing a submission for a chapter event).
