Guest View: Take Two Aspirin...
By Matt Heusser
October 1, 2005 —
(Page 1 of 4)
Recently a well-known project management guru came through town. He presented a seminar on project management and gave everyone a copy of his book.
It was thick, very thick. And hardcover. The book had a promising title: “Expert Project Management” or “Black-Belt Project Management” or something like that. On the cover were the logos of dozens of very large companies: Computer Associates, EDS, GM, Sherman Williams, Sun, Texas Instruments and others. I suppose those are companies that use the techniques in the book, or companies for which the author consulted...it wasn’t really clear. In any event, the book was hardcover, and thick, and the logos made it look very impressive.
Those logos were of large, publicly traded Fortune 500 companies, many with a technology focus, but the seminar’s attendees mostly came from smaller companies. Big corporations often compete in ways that are very different from those of small companies, and so I was immediately concerned that the book was touting one specific set of solutions, when the customers might not even have the same problems.
Then I started to read the book. My summary of the expert’s approach: First, create a methodology. Here are some examples. Here are some requirements templates. Here is how to set up your project management office. There is even a chapter on how to create a “best practices library,” along with a process to ensure the library was properly managed.
I found it interesting that the author provided no support for why his “best practices” were actually the best. Instead, he simply implied that they were always the best, whether the company was a three-person outfit writing computer games or a 3,000-person team writing software for the F-22 fighter jet. There was one way to manage projects, and he found it. “No need to look around. Go ahead, do it my way. You’ll be fine,” seems to be the general idea.
All this reminds me of the children’s story about the Pied Piper who played music for all the children of the village. The children followed him not because they wanted to go where he was going, but because the music sounded sweet.
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