by the way, yesterday I attended a PMI event in London with Merill Lynch (financial svcs company).

 

It was really good.

The event was about developing and attracting Senior Project Management Talent.

 

According to them, Project Management as an industry is approaching a crossroads, either it will become a fully recognised discipline and department within companies and even gain chartered status like Chartered Accountants etc.

On the other hand it could fizzle out and disappear as everybodys current roles will adapt to include Project Management skills and tools as a must have.

 

I guess this is similar to what Kerzner wrote in his book (Applied PM a systems approach) when describing different companies' approaches to incorporating Project Management, and he mentioned stuff like the Matrix structure etc.

 

There was a chap from IBM who is a Project "Fixer".  He goes to companies which have failing projects (particularly SAP ones) and turns them around.  He defined Project Management with 3 words "Leadership, Direction and Control".

The great thing about this speaker was his "simpleness".  He didn't use the typical Management vocabulary we are used to hearing such as "WBS elements" etc, rather he spoke slowly, to the point and would use analogies to make a point.  He pointed out that this is really what makes projects succeed and when managing projects, most of the resources (people) don't actually understand PM speak anyway.

 

Project Management is meant to Facilitate the achievement of objectives and not to create work.  Sadly a lot of PMOs create work and become authoritarian where they enforce rules on people threaten them with punishment (I think this is similar to the HR function in many organisations).

 

A nice word thrown at us describing what a project manager should be was "Facipulator".

Figured out what that means?

Its a combination of:

 

Facilitator

and

Manipulator

 

What is a Project Manager?  Typically someone who has completed Prince2 or PMP certification/training is considered a project manager.  Someone who uses words like "Critical Path" and "Project Lifecycle".

A wonderful point mentioned by Martin Price was that Project Management Talent is composed of two skill sets which he separated into Arena A and Arena B.

Arena A is the Project Management Toolbag comprising all the Project Management methodologies like PMI and Prince2 etc and software products and processes etc.

Arena B is the Leadership skills of Communicating, Negotiating, Listening etc.

 

Many people tend to call Arena B the Soft Skills and Arena A the Hard skills.

 

When developing talent, obviously people will have some Arena A and some Arena B skills.  Traditionally, project management development has focused on Arena development and training but neglected Arena B, which they assumed project managers have naturally anyway.

One may ask when recruiting PM talent, are we happy with somebody without Arena B but has Arena A?  Can we teach and develop Arena B skills to individuals?  The same questions can be asked vice versa.

The truth is both arenas are essential for effective, succesful Project Management.