Abstract.
A senior project manager at a reputable European project management association was recently heard to remark, “There is nothing new where project management is concerned.” But is that true? There is certainly massively growing interest in the topic; new standards appear each year, and more and more people are obtaining increasingly varied qualifications. But what is truly new? Are the core messages changing, or simply the packaging?
This paper draws upon the authors’ extensive exposure to project management in different industries and concludes that the changing context for project management is highlighting what is the same today as it has been for the past century (people's behavior and the need for careful planning), what has changed for the worse (a looming capacity crisis for competent and expert project managers, and a loss of skill in some areas such as estimating and planning) and what has changed for the better (new tools to support the management of projects and better integration of managing projects into the strategic activities of an enterprise). The paper ends with a review of the most significant trends of the past few years, and speculation about what these might mean for the future of the project management profession.
Introduction: The changing context for managing projects.
“What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
(Ecclesiastes 1:9, New Revised Standard Version of the Bible)
The results of two years of study by an international group of thirty or forty leading academics and practitioners of project management had just been presented to the assembled members of the Major Projects Association (MPA) in a three-hour seminar in October 2006. As is the custom at such meetings, one senior project manager was invited to reflect back to the meeting the essence of the discussion and, by way of introduction, he remarked that, “There is nothing new where project management is concerned”. The reflections were encouraging and positive, but the disconnect between the introductory comment and the title of the seminar and study Rethinking Project Management ((MPA, 2006) was such that it gave rise in the authors’ mind to a searching question, “Is there anything new in the world of project management?” This paper is our attempt to provide a reflective and balanced answer to that question.
It seems reasonable to restrict our reflections to the past fifteen years or so – covering the last decade of the twentieth century, and the first few years of the twenty-first. A period that has seen a dramatic increase in the proportion of work that is undertaken as projects rather than as repetitive operations, or “business as usual”. (Davies &Hobday, 2005; Morris &Pinto, 2004) This expansion of project-based activity has not been restricted to any one market or sector, but has rather been experienced throughout the private, public and voluntary sectors. (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2004; Flyvbjerg, Brunelius, &Rothengatter, 2003)
This has had a number of consequences for the context within which project management is practiced. In the traditional engineering industries at the heartland of “classic” project management, there has always been a clear separation between the “client” (who specifies, pays for, commissions and operates the product or service produced by the project) and the “contractor” (who delivers the project) with the contract laying down the details of the commercial relationship between the two. Indeed, project management has traditionally been taught in universities in engineering departments (Cooke-Davies & Wolstenholme, 1998), thus underlining the nature of the discipline as the “execution” phase of some engineering enterprise.
As projects have become the norm in industries such as automotive, energy, manufacturing, professional services, retail, financial services, information technology (IT), entertainment, public sector and pharmaceuticals, the separation of client from contractor through the discipline of a contract has been replaced, more often than not, by internal processes whereby a project manager seeks to deliver a product or service that satisfies one or more sponsors. In parallel with this change, an increasing number of business schools have started adding project management to their core curricula.
However, as the amount of work carried out as projects has increased, two related things have happened. Firstly, businesses with no extensive history of managing projects have found themselves managing large portfolios of projects, and have been able to achieve varying degrees of maturity in doing so (Cooke-Davies & Arzymanow, 2002). Secondly, the demand for project managers has outstripped the supply of qualified specialists, giving rise to both a large number of “accidental” project managers (Ensworth, 2001) and a dramatic increase in demand for project management credentials such as Project Management Professional (PMP®) or Prince2™ certification. Universities around the world have responded to this demand by offering an increasing number of Masters degree courses in project management, which in turn has led to an increase in research activity.
So against this background of expansion and diffusion, let us look, first of all, at what has remained the same, before moving on to examine what has changed, both for better and for worse.
Some things stay the same.
There are, of course, many things that have remained pretty much the same. But of all of them, three in particular seem to be worthy of highlighting because of their importance in any future agenda for our profession.
Projects are delivered by people, not by processes, tools or systems.
Projects are delivered by groups of people working together, and not by processes, by project management tools, or by clever project management systems. And in many of the ways that matter as far as the management of projects is concerned, people and their behavior haven't changed much. For all changes to our technological world, people still behave towards each other much as they have done since (at least) the dawn of recorded history. People are still moved to both helpful and unhelpful behaviors by their emotions (that is, after all, what the word e-motion implies – an impulse that leads to action), and projects, dealing as they do both with change and with temporary organizations, give rise to many such emotions.
In traditional project-based industries, it has long been recognized that only certain people have the necessary aptitude to become good project managers and project directors, and organizations whose business is projects have developed long and careful “apprenticeships” and staged growth for those people who show both the desire and the aptitude for this kind of work. Today, as fifteen years ago, such people who have reached the top of the tree in terms of being entrusted with the leadership of “mega projects” will tell you that the primary job of the senior project manager is to manage the conflicting interests and agendas of key stakeholders, both outside and inside the boundaries of the project.
Good planning lies at the heart of managing projects
In the literature on project management, more has been written about project planning than about any other single topic. Since the techniques of Henry Gantt gained widespread currency in the early years of the twentieth century, planning has been at the heart of the discipline of project management. Major military initiatives during the Second World War, followed by the introduction of critical path methods such as Programme Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) during the 1950's, added momentum to this trend (Morris, 1994), so that today, even in the face of much that has changed, planning is seen as the most significant component of project management. For example:
- 21 out of the 44 processes that comprise A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Third Edition, belong to the Planning group of processes, with the remaining 23 being shared among the remaining four groups (2 each to Initiating and Closing, 7 to Executing and 12 to Monitoring and Controlling).
- Product-based planning lies at the heart of the Prince2 methodology.
- 141 of the 586 “best practices” described in Organizational Project Management Maturity Model Knowledge Foundation (OPM3®), Project Management Institute's (PMI®)Organizational Project Management Maturity Model are concerned with plans or planning.
- In PMI's 2002 Technical Needs Assessment, which was answered by 334 project management professionals, project planning was identified as the process group that should receive the highest priority from PMI in terms of research and development.
It is natural that this should be the case when you reflect on the essential nature of projects. Projects need distinctive management practices because they are essentially different from repetitive work that is operational or transactional by nature. For this second kind of work (let us call it “business as usual” for convenience) planning is essentially a process of examining past and present performance and designing ways of doing it better, faster or cheaper in future. To put it another way, in the world of “business as usual” planning for tomorrow is largely based on yesterday.
It is very different with projects, however, since to a greater or lesser extent, each project is seeking to create beneficial change through some product or service that exists at the outset only in the imagination of its designer. In other words, in the world of projects planning for tomorrow is all about trying to envision what is involved in creating something that didn't exist yesterday. That is why project plans need to contain skilfully prepared estimates of resources, costs and durations, as well as both contingency and containment actions to respond to risk events that may or may not happen. The more ambitious or unclear a project's goals are, of course, the greater are the planning skills required – just as is the case when stakeholder interests are more diverse, or when cultural backgrounds of the project team are more varied.
Too many projects are perceived to “fail”
The third element that shows little sign of changing is an unfortunate one. In spite of these well-known research results and despite column-miles of words that have been written about project management (Kloppenborg & Opfer, 2000), despite decades of individual and collective experience of managing projects (Morris, 1993), despite the rapid growth in membership of project management professional bodies and despite a dramatic increase in the amount of project working in industry, project results continue to disappoint stakeholders. (O‘Connor & Reinsborough, 1992; Standish Group, 1995; Cooke-Davies, 2000) Lest we derive any comfort from the growth of our profession, it is a sobering observation that the performance of large public-sector infrastructure projects, for example, has not improved for a century!! (Flyvbjerg et. al., 2003)
And of the three unchanging aspects of project management that have been mentioned here, this is the one that should change. Arguably, the primary importance of people working and planning together is unlikely ever to change, and forms much of the basis to our shared craft. But surely both the actual track record of project delivery, and the public perception that too many projects fail are aspects that should drive our professional agenda during the next decade. Indeed, the remainder of this paper can be seen as a review of the scope of work that might help to reverse this unhappy and persistent situation.
Some things are getting worse.
Before moving on to consider what is changing for the better, and what might therefore give us hope that we might be on the brink of significantly improving both our track record and how it is perceived, we should first of all pause and examine two trends that might suggest we will have to run fast simply to stand still in the race for improved success. Two in particular seem to strike at the heart of our profession: the number of competent and expert project managers, and the availability of planning and estimating expertise.
Demand for competent and expert project managers is outstripping supply.
As more and more work is being performed as projects rather than “business as usual”, the demand for competent project managers is growing faster than the market can supply them. Ironically, this is especially true in the heartland of project management, engineering construction. The age profile of project managers in many industries resembles that of a twin-humped camel, with many of the most experienced, expert and competent people now approaching the age of retirement. The PMI Business Round Table in London in October 2006, dealing with the management of projects with a high degree of complexity in different industries, concluded that this shortage is the most pressing problem facing the defense and engineering construction industries. Approaching the same problem from a different perspective, the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers (ISPE) were told at a conference in Paris in April 2007 to expect engineering projects to become significantly more expensive and to experience greater delays, because of the looming capacity “crisis” of qualified engineers and project personnel. Many organizations appear to be adopting the attitude that what cannot be provided “in-house” can always be procured from contractors – but this is simply exporting the problem, and will simply drive process up if the core problem is not addressed.
It is true that there are growing number of people seeking accreditation as project managers, taking both PMP and Prince2 examination, but that doesn't address the core questions of competence and expertise which are hard won and need more than either process frameworks or the acquisition of knowledge. Unfortunately, the implications of this do not seem to be appreciated by employers, as our next discussion topic will illustrate.
Key planning and estimating skills are being neglected.
Research by Human Systems has demonstrated that when the planning systems, processes and practices used to develop the project plan are rigorous and proven, and incorporate effective review processes, this proves to be the most important factor in improving project results in terms of cost, time and scope. It accounts for a 40% improvement in results on its own. (See Crawford & Cooke-Davies, 2005) In sharp contrast to this, during the 14 years that Human Systems has been benchmarking organizational delivery capability, this is the only practice area that has not shown any increase. All other areas have shown some improvement, even as new organizations have been added to the data set and as the mix of organizations being benchmarked has changed.
In order to gain a more detailed picture, in September 2005 Human Systems undertook more detailed research into the detailed manner in which organizations set about the practice of project planning and estimating, and followed this with workshops on the topics of Project Planning (October 2005) and Estimating on Projects (March 2005). The research shows that both planning and estimating are indeed sources of problems within many large organizations. (Human Systems, 2006)
The keeping of records seems to lie at or close to the heart of the problem. Only 1 in 5 organizations keep records for all project activity showing how actual results for cost and schedule compare with those incorporated in approved plans, and less than a half of these use the information for continuous improvement. Based on the records that organizations do keep, there is a strong correlation between the extent to which records are kept and used, and the results that are obtained against plan.
Keeping records across the whole organization requires a coherent and consistent focus on the importance of planning on the part of senior management. As such, the absence of records is simply one symptom of a broader problem, and this is also born out by other findings.
Simply following the recommended processes for estimating and planning projects is clearly insufficient to produce a plan that is “do-able” and thus provide the basis for effective delivery. Unless the right people with the right skills, competence and motivation are working together throughout the life of a program or project, encouraged by the right organizational commitment to “get it right” time after time, project planning is simply a matter of “going through the motions”.
In all but the most straightforward of cases, the acts of planning and estimating call for corporate discipline, for sophisticated understanding of the problems, and for skilled and competent people in the right project roles.
Lacking the right materials, and paying insufficient attention to detail, it is quite possible to weave plans that afford the project client or sponsor little more cover than the emperor's new clothes. Indeed, the illusion can be intensified by the existence of powerful new planning tools and software (see below) which, unfortunately, do not do the planning for the people who use them.
Some things are changing for the better
Taken together, the two areas described above pose serious problems for the project management profession, and for those it exists to serve. On the other hand, there are other areas that are definitely changing for the better most notably three that, as it happens, all begin with the letter “T”; tools, techniques and theory.
Aided by advances in IS/IT, more sophisticated tools are now available.
Neither project managers nor organizations undertaking projects have ever had access to the range of tools, their power and their sophistication that are available to them today. Planning is supported by tools ranging from standalone project planning and management software with clever risk management capability all for less than $100 up to fully integrated enterprise-wide project management (EPM) packages costing well into 8 or 9 figures. Virtual project teams are supported by a wide range of collaborative software tools that assist with both documentation and communication.
Indeed, at the top end of these systems there are now organizations (admittedly as yet few and far between) with the systems capability to integrate enterprise-wide resource management with portfolio management of the entire portfolio of programs and projects being undertaken at any one time. We will say more about portfolio and program management later, but evidence of the link between fully resourcing projects and programs and delivering successful results was demonstrated by the present authors earlier this year (Teague & Cooke-Davies, 2007)
New techniques are becoming available to project managers.
While most of the techniques available for planning projects (critical path method, PERT, WBS, Earned Value Management and the like) have been around for more than 50 years, techniques such as critical chain and Six Sigma are innovations in the world of planning projects. Critical chain, with appropriate software support, has developed a cadre of firm supporters, and may, indeed, help to address the deteriorating planning and estimating skills – possibly by simply raising people's awareness of the importance of planning, and developing an awareness of the critical importance of estimating resources and durations with diligence.
Six Sigma, on the other hand, is a relatively new import to project management from the world of process improvement and quality management. By illustrating the intertwined nature of projects and processes (of which more later, when discussing maturity models) Six Sigma is able both to show measurable improvement in the performance of certain project-specific processes and also to demonstrate that it is possible to deliver successful projects (of certain kinds) consistently. One of the world's leading project management organizations goes so far as to say of its investment in six sigma, “Six Sigma is the most important initiative for change we have ever undertaken. We're happy to report that it's becoming ‘the way we work.’” (Bechtel, 2007, ¶8)
Academics are seeking a more robust theoretical base to the discipline of project management.
As the twenty-first century has gotten underway, there has been growing criticism that the theoretical underpinning of project management is failing to keep up with the realities of project management practice as they are now experienced.
The criticism is not only that the basis of project management in control theory is too narrow, but that most research and practice grow out of a paradigm that is even more coherent, more binding, and more complete than control theory itself (Cooke-Davies, Cicmil,, Crawford, & Richardson, 2007). In this paradigm, assumptions about rational behavior and about simple cause and effect run deep – if A happens, then B will follow. Whereas in reality the human element in any project ensures that this is not always the case, particularly in projects with a high degree of complexity.
That is not to say, of course, that there are not practitioners who operate beyond these ideals. Indeed, there are two pointers to the widespread recognition of the inadequacy of the current prevalent paradigm. Firstly, as has already been mentioned, leading organizations whose business is project management have long recognized the importance of tough “interpersonal” and “communication” skills on the part of their most expert project management practitioners. And secondly, although the “human side of project management” has had fewer words written about it than the more prevalent control techniques, there has been a general tendency to underline how important it is not top neglect the people aspects of managing projects.
The area that offers real hope of “squaring” this particular “circle” is the field of research cutting across many branches of physical-, life- and social sciences known as “complexity” theory. At the same time as practitioners are raising the topic of complexity in projects, research drawing on complexity theory is beginning to be undertaken in the world of projects. A recent two-year long program funded by the UK government identified a framework of five directions aimed at developing the field intellectually in the following areas: project complexity, social process, value creation, project conceptualisation, and practitioner development. (Winters et. al., 2006)
This offers real hope for coming to grips with the intractable problems of perceptions of the project success and the ability of the profession to rise to the challenge. It is also an appropriate “lens” through which to examine many of the topics that have surfaced along with the expanded scope of the profession, to which we will now turn our attention.
The scope of the profession is changing from “project management” to “managing projects”
More significant than either what has changed about project management or what hasn't, is the question of what is now considered to be the scope of the profession. The recent launch of standards for program management, portfolio management and organizational project management, coupled with the tag line adopted by PMI – “making project management indispensable for business results” – make it clear that the scope of work which the profession regards as its “field of operations” has expanded dramatically during the past ten or fifteen years.
Whereas for most of its existence, the focus of project management has been on what represents good practice for “most projects, most of the time”, this is now clearly only a small part of its much broader focus.
Managing projects is a “whole organization” activity.
When the maturity of project management in different industries is compared, one fact stands out that is directly relevant to the difference between project management and managing projects. The one domain of practice in which all industries share practices of similar maturity is in the management of multiple projects, as Exhibit 1 (below) shows.
Exhibit 1: Maturity of Project Management Domains in Different Industries (Disnmore & Cooke-Davies, 2005)
No wonder, then, that the practices associated with program management, portfolio management, and organizational project management should receive so much attention in recent years. After all, much corporate risk is associated with the difficulties of managing the necessary portfolio of change, and legislative initiatives such as Sarbanes-Oxley have drawn senior managements’ attention to the real and severe penalties that flow from failing to manage risk responsibly.
One effect of this trend has been to widen the group of people who are involved in attempts to improve the practices involved in all aspects of managing projects. Even in the management of individual projects, the role of the executive sponsor is increasingly being recognized as pivotal (Crawford & Cooke-Davies, 2005), and the focus of project management is expanding beyond the delivery of a product or service to the creation of value through the delivery of benefits.
A second effect has been to recognize that development of organizational capability requires a layered approach – building capability at the strategic layer, at the “ownership” layer and at the delivery layer, and supporting both the people and the processes that together constitute each layer of capability.
Is there anything new under the sun?
It will be difficult to read of the developments outlined all too briefly in this paper and fail to recognize that even if there is a general truth to the Biblical quotation that gave rise to this article, it is even more true that the practice of project management is changing as it rises to meet the new challenges of a broader role nearer to the centre of the corporate spotlight than ever before.
There are signs that as the scope of practice penetrates more deeply into more levels of the organization, the basis to both practice and experience is indeed being broadened to embrace, alongside the existing paradigm of forward-looking control, an equally explicit and well-developed acknowledgement of the complexity introduced into managing projects by people with the multi-faceted social and behavioural complexity that they bring along with the ambitious goals that give rise to projects in the first place.