PROJECT Management explored

Yesterday I heard a well known TV cook saying on the radio that if you haven't already started planning for Christmas then you have missed the boat.

It got me thinking about projects and how they are all around us and how people use project management approaches/competencies every day without recognising they are.  While we as project managers may be able to step back and realise that pre-ordering the Turkey is risk mitigation the majority of the population who aren't trained PMs just see it as common sense because everyone will want one….and the ones available on Christmas eve never look good.  We all know some people who prepare well and breeze through Christmas seemingly effortlessly without any formal project management training or skills, or dare I say...documentation! So does that mean the Project Management industry is false? Are our methods, tools and competence frameworks all overinflated and self important?

Perhaps sometimes just a little....but rather we should think about the complexity of the project at hand and the number of people involved in delivering it.  Low complexity projects, with limited risks and no regulatory drivers can often be delivered with very low levels of documentation and methodology and by individuals without much/any formal training.  I always like to think about 'Project Management' (the whole methods, tools, competence thing) as a communications aid.  After all it is true that people deliver projects and if you have a lot of people working together they need an unambiguous way to communicate, to know what their part is in the machine.

So this brings me back I guess to context and scaling....as my thoughts so often do.  Work out which projects are 'simplest' and use 'fit for purpose project management' on these.  Thereby freeing serious resource/activity/oversight to be focussed on the complex, risky projects where more structured processes and capabilities are required to let the teams function correctly.

Finishing off then, I bet someone organising a serious banquet like the one Obama threw this week has a project plan, a risk log and uses the full range of 'Project Management' to ensure success, they would be mad not too!