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Thursday, June 21, 2007
And Then Came Complex Project Management! - Debate encouraged in Krakow
Reported by Larry Suda from the IPMA 2007 World Congress in Krakow, Poland
A paper written by S. Jonathan Whitty and Harvey Maylor of the University of Queensland created a lively discussion with the IPMA attendees on the second day of the 21st IPMA World Congress on Project Managing, continuing into the third day, in Krakow, Poland – and that was the intent of the authors.
The Paper “And Then Came Complex Project Management” delivered by Jonathan Whitty in a late afternoon session challenged the approach, process, content and consequently the claims made by the newly emerged “complex project management” competency standard promoted by the College of Complex Project Managers (CCPM) in Australia.
According to the authors, “The issue of interest for this paper is the establishment of the ‘College of Complex Project Managers’ and their ‘competency standard’ for complex project managers.”
The authors disputed the Complex Project Management Initiative in several areas. The first area is based on their concerns over the approach taken by the College to define and then justify their claims of complex systems and complexity related to projects. According to the Authors there appears to be no evidence that the projects used as examples by the College meet a “threshold test of a measure of complexity.” The Authors state that the project examples used to justify their claims are “complicated or major projects.”
Second, “there has been no analysis of the problems that the establishment of this initiative is intended to solve. And third, “the process by which the College and the standard have progressed has gone un-checked; and the standard is not established on evidence-based practices.
How and when the “competency standard for complex project managers” was established is very clear. “In 2006 PM was purportedly added to the list of disciplines to which complexity theory was applied, as the ‘discipline of CPM’ was officially launched at the 20th IPMA World Congress in Shanghai.” Why, and the process used to create the standards, are what is at issue with the Authors, as well as others who attended the paper presentation.
The Authors stated, “The process of the development of the College and the standard are undoubtedly flawed, and maybe given the emergent state of development of the academic subject area, they simply fill a vacuum.”
The Authors propose a challenge for all practitioners to debate the merits and value of this new development. A full version of their paper can be found at http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view.php?pid=UQ:13419.
(Editors note: We at PMForum would welcome feedback on this issue of complex project management. In fact, we will offer to publish both sides of the debate in the monthly PM World Today, so readers, please send a letter to the editor on this subject.)
A paper written by S. Jonathan Whitty and Harvey Maylor of the University of Queensland created a lively discussion with the IPMA attendees on the second day of the 21st IPMA World Congress on Project Managing, continuing into the third day, in Krakow, Poland – and that was the intent of the authors.
According to the authors, “The issue of interest for this paper is the establishment of the ‘College of Complex Project Managers’ and their ‘competency standard’ for complex project managers.”
Second, “there has been no analysis of the problems that the establishment of this initiative is intended to solve. And third, “the process by which the College and the standard have progressed has gone un-checked; and the standard is not established on evidence-based practices.
How and when the “competency standard for complex project managers” was established is very clear. “In 2006 PM was purportedly added to the list of disciplines to which complexity theory was applied, as the ‘discipline of CPM’ was officially launched at the 20th IPMA World Congress in Shanghai.” Why, and the process used to create the standards, are what is at issue with the Authors, as well as others who attended the paper presentation.
The Authors stated, “The process of the development of the College and the standard are undoubtedly flawed, and maybe given the emergent state of development of the academic subject area, they simply fill a vacuum.”
The Authors propose a challenge for all practitioners to debate the merits and value of this new development. A full version of their paper can be found at http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view.php?pid=UQ:13419.
(Editors note: We at PMForum would welcome feedback on this issue of complex project management. In fact, we will offer to publish both sides of the debate in the monthly PM World Today, so readers, please send a letter to the editor on this subject.)
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