I encourage all PMFORUM readers, especially those from practitioner corporations, consulting and training firms, and PM vendors, to place ads in PMFORUM to help assure that it continues to serve our widespread community. PMI should not be the only highly profitable organization "serving" the project management community! Put the pressure on your maketing, advertising, and business deveopment people. 150,000 qualified readers per month is no doubt far more that the number who actually read (or even open) PMI's PMNetwork Magazine, in fact.

If you are having trouble recruiting qualified people PMFORUM is the place to find them.

Russ Archibald
Fellow PMI, Honorary Fellow APM/IPMA
PMI Member No. 6

www.russarchibald.com

Very Interesting comments in the article "WHO ARE THE TRUE LEADERS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT?"

As an University of Texas Construction Engineering anr Project Management Program (CEPM) ex student, I would like to find Dr. Richard Tucker in the list (founder and former director of the program). Dr. Tucker has been a leader in the graduate programs of Project Management, and his support to the Construction Industry Institute has led to hundreds of project management research, with the support of universities and industry members. Dr. Tucker's job has led Project Management to the sphera of a distingish field of knowledge in academia. Industry invests an important amount of time and money supporting CII´s research mainly because its products strenghten the ProjectManagement practice with scientific support. The Project Management Field needs more and more study, more and more research to keep growing in reputation and results, and Dr. Tucker's contribution to this growth is undeniable.

Thanks!
Ana Rodriguez

Dear Mr. Robert Youker

I have gone through the view points of you on PROJECT MANAGER SUCCESS CRITERIA, This article is very close to the realistic situation of these days. I felt the article is very informative and useful.

Can you share your view points on the future for project management in Pharmaceutical industry with respect to New product development.

Thanks and regards
Chowdary.G.P.
chowdarygp@yahoo.com

The article in the May issue on the history of scheduling by Patrick Weaver was well done but missed some important developments. It would have benefited greatly if the author had read Peter Morris's book, "The Managment of Projects" a well done history of Project Management (Thomas Telford Books, London 1994). The paper does a great job of detailing the Walker and
Kelly contribution to developing arrow diagramming. It missed the name of Wil Fazar who did key work on the PERT system.

It also missed the early work of the foundations of precedence diagramming by the British Central Electricity Generating Board in 1957, Mr B. Roy in 1958 with METRA Consultants of France with the MPM (the Metra Potential Method) and the Germans about the same time in Munich with RPS. He also missed Planalog System developed in 1962 and patented in in 1964 for creating and maintaining critical path networks on a wall mounted display board. If you look today at an MS Project linked Gantt Chart you are seeing exactly a Planalog Schedule Board which was in 3 D not on a computer screen or printed on a piece of paper. The Planalog gave an immediate display of results of changes in a schedule at a time when central computers faced
several days or weeks of delay. I have been told the Primavera System was based on Planalog. Both were developed in the Philadelphia area.

Robert Youker

I have one comment and one question about the importance of ethics in project management.

The comment is about another letter about this subject decrying the use ofthe term "profession" for project management. While the writer may strictly be correct it seems more about nitpicking than substance. I think it is correct to assume the mantle of professional even if there is no profession as such. To do otherwise lets in the door the claim that a professional attitude is not required; that would be a shame.

What I really would like to do is ask for your response to the following. I teach a full semester subject on ethics and systems quality to IT students in a tertiary institution and received the following comment about the subject from a student.

"From Project Management perspective most of this is subject to common sense and I should'nt have to spend two terms on Ethics and Philosophy."

The reply seems obvious to me but as teachers we sometimes are accused of being out of touch with the real world. How would a real, ethical, project manager respond to this?

Thanks,
Richard Lucas
Research Fellow
Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics
Australian National University

I loved your editorial on PMOs. Most people don't know it but in the 1960s many organizations had PMOs in central PM groups in the computer departments who ran large CPM systems on the central computer and were supposed to help the individual PMs with various services. In 1968 I did a workshop for 10 contruction project managers at Kodak. They all had been getting 2 inch thick printouts of the CPM from the central PMO once a month for several years and not one had ever looked at the printout! In some cases the central group reported possible delays in projects to top management without checking with the PM who had a plan to stay on schedule. When a RIF (reduction in force) came along no one supported the PMO!!!

Bob Youker

Hugh

I was somewhere between disgusted and ashamed when I read the PMI article about the top 50; incredulous probably fits also. Thank you for providing the stimulus that loosed the flurry (avalanche? flood? firehose? indignation? disbelief?) reflected in recent letters to the editor. I want to add my voice to those castigating/ berating/ admonishing/ criticizing/??/??/?? PMI for their selection. Please add my name to the list of those protesting and, in my case at least, indignant. I will not cite true leaders that should have been listed as your editorial and the prior readers' comments do that adequately.

In the interest of fairness, I would like to see PMForum issue a formal, net-published and also postal-service-delivered invitation to the PMI Board of Directors and to Mr. Balestrero to present the rationale for selection, the criteria, and the sources of voting input in arriving at this list. I would suggest that PMForum, speaking on behalf of a significant number of long term dedicated and passionate-about-PM PMI members, request a response to PMForum including the provision that the Board of Directors respond as a Board as well as by the individual member(s). This latter should be given in light of both their acting as reprersentative(s) of the membership that elected them AND of their stated aims, intents and promises contained in
their "election platform" published in connection with the balloting.

Eric Jenett, PMI Founder, Member #3, Fellow, PMP #1 (ret)

Dear Hugh,

You're spot on - where do we debate the future of Project Management? Further, why should PM practitioners be concerned about that? I think that you are correct in pointing out that the dilution of forum - and subsequent lack of fresh direction could stagnate PM into another "mature" profession without the necessary factions needed to debate the evolution.

As a PM practitioner for twenty-odd years, I've witnessed a trend towards tactical PM practice that has evolved into a safer, homogeneous profession. Our clients want profound change - not the run-of-the-mill monthly performance reporting, schedule jockey resource. With a seemingly massive pool of certified PMBOK-thumpers ringing the doorbell, how do they find the
visionaries?

Scope. Schedule. Cost. It's so much more than that. Risk. Performance. Transition. Sustainability. Business acumen must enter the PM mindset so that we do not succumb to being "off-the-shelf" project managers. I challenge readers to re-read the article and ask themselves how they can add value as PM's in a "tactical visionary" role. Without the leaders and debates, get ready to put yourself in a box and be shrink wrapped!

Regards,
Marc Zocher, PMP CEO
www.morphic.com

Dear Hugh,

Your recent editorial on “Where do we debate the future of project management” was great, timely and relevant. Even in the old formats of PMI Seminars and Symposia and IPMA world congresses, however, there were not enough real debates on issues of importance to modern project management.

I have long thought that it would be a good idea for real debates to occur, even be sponsored by PMI, where some of the issues that have been raised as criticisms of PMI or of the PM profession could be fairly and openly debated. For example, the PMP is sometimes criticized as a poor qualification for real project managers. I believe, however, that there are many PMPs who would argue that they are, in fact, better project managers with their PMP than without (in the context of their organizations, personal experience, individual projects, industry, and/or personal perspectives).

What is good or bad about PMI's Guide to the PMBOK, or about critical chain scheduling, earned value or any other PM concept, policy or practice? What will the future of modern project management entail? Does modern PM even have a future? Will there ever be a project management “profession”? I think debates could be both useful and entertaining. But where or how could such debates occur? Perhaps you could publish “debates”, with two sides of an issue represented, in your PM World Today.

I also believe in continuous improvement, in non-threatening and less confrontational ways, and criticism in constructive language. These approaches are certainly advanced in psychology and sociology as more effective approaches for promoting positive changes. Generally speaking, I believe that policies and actions can be openly criticized, if appropriate, but individual persons or even organizations (such as PMI) should be respected. Open debate would seem to be the perfect vehicle for raising issues and providing opportunities for both sides to be fairly heard.

Respectfully,

David L. Pells
PMI Fellow
Dallas

Paul Giammalvo comments on David Pell's guest editorial in the January PM World Today:

While I agree fully and totally with you about the importance of adopting a "world class" Code of Ethics as part of the "professionalization" process, there is an issue your editorial raises that I think important to address. You referred to the "Profession" of Project Management. I am curious what evidence do you have justifying or supporting calling project management a "profession"?

In a recent research project funded in part by PMI, Bill Zwerman and Janice Thomas concluded Project Management "is not now, nor is it likely to be in the near future, considered a profession". My own PhD research following up on the work of Zwerman et al substantiates very much the same thing.

There is no empirical evidence supporting our occupational specialty is a profession, whether looked at using the "Extrinsic" or traditional traits, or the "Intrinsic" or non-traditional attributes. As a matter of fact, a global survey of practitioners completed late in 2005 indicates very clearly that a representative sample of some 400 global respondents perceive what we do as a "process, methodology or system" and not a profession at all.

As the PMForum has earned an enviable reputation for being the "No Spin Zone" of project management, I would urge the contributors and readership that henceforth, instead of perpetuating a marketing myth, that we refer to project management as an "EMERGENT" or "EVOLVING" profession at best, and more appropriately, I believe the term we SHOULD be using is PRACTICE. For until the processes, methodologies or systems we develop are mature enough to consistently deliver projects "on time", "within budget" while "substantially fulfilling stakeholder needs, wants and expectations", all we are doing is "PRACTICING".

Paul Giammalvo, CDT, PMP, CCE, MScPM

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about the top 50. I find it appalling that the selection was made without asking the community at large for one. When we set aside folks who have given heart and sole to the profession by writing texts that are now regarded as the foundation of the profession, we are doing a disservice to the masses of folks who are seeking
to find the role model to follow.

You mentioned a few like Barnes but we need the Cleland, Frame, and Kerzner to be listed as the leaders as well as folks who are on the front lines and are the unsung mentors in systems who have succeeded in their lines of work.

Let's get real, the 50 listed are no more leaders in the area than they are corporate folks who lead PM organizations. If we wanted to bill them as such I might be able to support that effort. Trying to win favor by listing folks from large firms is not a winning ticket for a professional
organization.

Becky Winston

Rebecca Winston, PMI Fellow, currently serves as a consultant for the National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security.