Project Management Unplugged
Unplug the amps and get back to our roots.
By Lee R. Lambert, PMP, CEO

In 2000, the soundtrack from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? captured the attention of the listening public, earning award after award. Although the music was old-style, grounded in our heritage, the sounds were new to today's sensibilities and soothing to our ears. People who had listened to and come to accept hard rock hype, pyrotechnics, and amplification in their music tuned into the back-to-our-roots acoustic sounds of Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Dan Tyminski and bluegrass music icon Ralph Stanley. The popularity of O Brother led a resurgence in this type of music and proved that it wasn't necessary to rely on bells-'n-whistles to get your message across, that you can be just as effective without the plethora of automated gadgets.

So what does music have to do with project management, and whether or not it is plugged in (amplified) or acoustic (basic)?

During my 40+ years in the profession of Project Management everything has changed and yet everything has stayed the same. When I started my career as a team member on cryogenic liquid storage tank projects for Chicago Bridge and Iron in 1966, I was required to prepare my task list and estimate how much effort it would take and how much money it would cost to complete each assigned task. Today, every project manager prepares a task list (Work Breakdown Structure) and estimates how much effort it would take and how much money it will cost to complete each task.

In 1966 I was required to establish a workflow (precedent diagram) to define what tasks must be completed before other tasks could begin so that I could determine a project delivery date. Project managers today are asked to do the same: take the WBS tasks that must be completed before other tasks can begin and create a workflow that will identify a project delivery date.

In 1966 the output of all this definition and planning was a timeline for the completion of individual tasks and a projected end date for each stand-alone project. Today, the project manager's effort in this area produces a timeline for the completion of individual tasks and a projected end date for each stand-alone project. During the past 36 years the entire world around the project management process has experienced incredible change, primarily brought about by the introduction of personal computers and the advancements in information technology, but in the world of project management process, everything has actually stayed pretty much the same.

The Powerful Amps Around Us

In 1966 we did project management the old-fashioned way--manually, acoustically. We worked for what seemed endless hours preparing project plans, gathering actual information, projecting outcomes, and finally making well-thought-out decisions, which sometimes led to needed changes. Now, 36 years later, these painstaking chores have been all but eliminated. Today we have the power of automation and amplification to take away the drudgery of the manual preparation and manipulation of data that project managers translate into the information necessary to support the project management decision-making process.

But also, thanks to computers and the myriad software options that continue to increase at an exponential rate, we have empowered ourselves with the ability to prepare and deliver bad project information faster. Some might say, the only thing that has really changed is that automation has provided us with the opportunity to create the illusion of efficient and effective project management--more data, faster data, colored data. Every experienced project manager knows that a mess automated is nothing more than an automated mess. You can plug in the amps and rev up the sound and still not have good music. And a fool with an automated tool is still a fool!

Is automation the silver bullet in the project manager's arsenal, as many choose to believe? Experienced, battle-tested project managers would suggest, perhaps even confirm, that there is no silver bullet. But, even if automation were this proverbial magic bullet, my observations indicate that we might very well be using it to shoot off our own project management "foot."

The Bigger, Basic Power Within Us

I think it is time to implement a novel approach to project management in the 2000s. I believe it is time to go back to our roots, back to the basics, back to using our brain to solve problems--back to acoustic project management.

I am convinced that until we realize that project management--especially the definition and planning of projects--is time-consuming, hands-on, hard work that demands realistic, thought-provoking, considerations by real, live people with relevant experience, we will not school ourselves to think through our processes before we make project management decisions. If what appears almost to be an obsession with automation continues uncontrolled, the plight of the new-age project manager may well be attempting to make sense of beneficial business decisions based upon bigger and bigger automated messes!

In our rush to embrace the concept of data automation as the answer to our project management woes, an unusual phenomenon seems to be evolving: The more comprehensive and feature-rich the automated system becomes, the more excuses project managers find not to use it; or worse, they find opportunities to blame the software for failing to properly manage their project. So, if automation, amplification, is not the silver bullet for saving our errant projects, neither is it the cause of all our problems.

Project managers must accept accountability for the project's success and admit that automation only provides the potential for basing project decisions on more timely, accurate, and meaningful information.

In real estate we learned that there are only three things that matter: location, location, location. In project management the same concept should be considered. For those in the project management profession there are only three critical words that matter: think, think, and think. A computer and its software can't think for us. Computers take the output of people and then organize it, manipulate it, and report it. Once the computer has done "its thing," it is time for people to think, re-think, and then think again about whether the computer's determination is right or wrong for their projects.

Herein lies the essence of the problem. In many organizations vital "Think Time" is clearly and consciously a discretionary activity. It seems the project philosophy of many organizations has rapidly gravitated to: "We don't have time to do it right, but we will have time to do it over, and over, and over." The interpretation here is that we create a cloud of dust, look busy, and the perception will be that progress is being made. In many organizations management looks upon thinking as nonproductive use of time, in essence sending the message to "Stop thinking, we've got work to do!"

Let's not work so hard to create the perception of project management at the expense of sound, comprehensive, and realistic planning. It's time to take the time to do it right the first time.

Project thinking is analogous to a decision to invest in the simple lubrication maintenance of your car's engine. You can choose to invest a little time and money in an oil change now and save a lot of headaches later, or you can choose to ignore the need to change the oil and pay a lot later, when your car's engine stops running. It seems like common sense to use your brain's power to think about and properly plan and manage your projects, so why is it so uncommon?

In the past 20 years I have spent a good portion of my professional time training project management professionals in 22 countries. To date, nearly 25,000 students have asked to harvest the fruits of my applied experience and have had an opportunity to seriously consider my candid opinions as to what enables the project management process to work... and what doesn't.

Most of the "students" already know the answers. I just help confirm how smart they really are. In fact, the feedback I get from these critical cogs in the project management machinery often indicates that perhaps the wrong people are in the class. In the students' opinion, their bosses are the ones who need to hear this "think" message. Thousands of times I have heard comments to the effect that, "The same people who paid my tuition to attend this training are the same people who will not allow me to use what I have learned here when I get back to the job." Isn't this the ultimate irony?

Innovation and change have provided the project management profession with countless powerful and potentially beneficial techniques and the automated tools to support them--the amps of the business, so to speak. If the modern-day project manager would just incorporate the time to think--using back-to-basics acoustic intelligence--to those tools that are eventually selected to help manage a project, I believe perception could become reality, and we will become project managers who are actually managing projects. We can unplug the amps and still create something worth listening to. Think about it!