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Hugh Woodward, Managing Editor
The annual PMI Seminars/Symposium used to be the gathering where the great questions confronting project management were debated. So was the bi-annual IPMA World Congress. Is project management a profession or merely a collection of tools? Is critical chain a new area of knowledge or simply an extension of critical path theory? Should the professional associations certify competence in project management or just knowledge? Is PMI’s PMP certification equivalent to IPMA Level B or Level C?
The PMI chapter leaders used to assemble before the Seminars/Symposium for a spirited meeting, called the Council of Chapter Presidents, where the worldwide community of project management was pondered, discussed, and shaped. Some of PMI’s most successful programs were incubated in that forum, as were many of its volunteer leaders.
But no more! The annual Seminars/Symposium has morphed into regional educational events ironically called PMI Global Congresses, and the Council of Chapter Presidents is nothing but a memory.
PMI implemented the changes for good reasons, of course. Nobody can argue they have not been successful in promoting the PMI brand of project management and volunteer leadership. But there is a downside to the disappearing debates. It is a growing risk of academic stagnation.
Academic dissent is not allowed at PMI events. Presentations are selected for their alignment to PMI’s Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge among other criteria. Where then do we debate what ought to be included in the body of knowledge? Where do we discuss the new management concepts that threaten the continued acceptance of PERT and CPM and earned value?
The trend away from critical thinking about project management is perhaps best exemplified by the selection of keynote speakers at major association conferences. The keynote speaker at PMI’s Global Congress Asia Pacific this month is Chin Ning-Chu, a former television actress and marketer, whose subject is “Leadership According to Sun Tzu's Art of War". The keynote speaker at last year’s North American Congress was Keith Harrell, a motivational speaker and author of "Attitude is Everything: Ten Life Changing Steps To Turning Attitude Into Action". The IPMA World Congress in New Delhi featured Dr. Karan Singh, founder of the International Centre of Science, Culture and Consciousness. He at least raised some critical questions in his presentation entitled “Many Dimensions of Peace” by highlighting the role of project management in solving the world's problems.
Ironically, it is the regional conferences that are best promoting thoughtful discussion about the direction of project management. Dr. Russ Archibald prompted vigorous discussion at the PMI Moscow Chapter’s annual conference last year with his predictions for the state of the art of project management in 2010. Hiroshi Tanaka challenged the Singapore Society of Project Managers 4th Annual Seminar to approach project management in the construction industry from an overall value enhancement structure.
The last provocative keynote on the future of project management at a major conference may have been Professor Peter Morris’s address to the 17th IPMA World Congress in Moscow in 2003. In a presentation entitled “The irrelevance of project management as a professional discipline”, he courageously asserted “while project management has historically been seen within a well-defined context of executing a task ‘on time, in budget, to scope,’ it is increasingly being seen that it has to operate within a much broader, and subtler environment.”
In 2000, there were 893,000 computer scientists-systems analysts in the USA - more than any other IT job category. Since then, nearly a quarter of American computer scientists-systems analysts, some 209,000, have vanished from the workforce. Also, 132,000 computer programmers disappeared during the same period, and the number of computer support specialists fell by 28,000, from 366,000 to 338,000. The reason for this precipitous decline, according to Karen Kosanovich, a Bureau of Labor Statistics economist, is that businesses are moving away from customized applications to off-the-shelf software.
Will the same fate befall project management? Who knows? But if we want
to be prepared, we had better start talking about it.
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