I conducted a workshop on the future of project management at IIR's ProjectWorld conference in Baltimore last week. Here is the brainstorming based on Microsoft's future of information work scenarios:
Proud Tower
- Project Management = science
- Rigid processes, only need to know what you need to know
- Single methodology
- Strong government influence on practice, but company ultimately decides on competitive issues
- Scope, cost, schedule (pick one)
- Very reliant on internal resources and capabilities
- Schedule is driven even if not realistic
- Low level of forgiveness for failure
- Control + Good Model = company existence
- Low innovation and freedom of thought
- Quality= Doing what the boss says
Continental Drift
- Project Management = discipline
- Reduced Innovation
- Government dictated methodology
- No outsourcing
- Resources only extend to region
- No worry about language (assumed)
- Divergent standards around the world (practices by region)
- Duplication of many companies doing the same thing
- Reduced specialization at the individual level – more “Jacks of All Trades”
- Projects are low risk
- Highly secure environment
- Less variation among projects
- Many compliance projects
- Virtualization of organization takes place within trusted core
- Quality=do what is least risky
Frontier Friction
- Project management=art
- All about people, trust and relationships
- Resources: use who and what is available
- Need to learn to negotiate with power (when power isn’t constrained by common law)
- Dependent on the luck of the skills that are in the pool
- No certifications or standards
- Skills taught by mentoring
- Quality = do the right thing
Freelance Planet
- Project Management = experiment (adventure)
- Team recruitment=Ocean’s 11 model (people I know and trust)
- Highly networked teams
- Only as good as your last job
- Strong peer pressure to succeed (last job reflects on team too)
- Either very honest or very dishonest, no room for gray
- Many projects, smaller in scope
- Projects are interesting
- No big firms (can’t gain critical mass among branded individuals)
- Negotiating with teams for credit, pay, etc.
- Methodology is determined by team, by project
- Communities of practice
- Less economies of scale
- Prima Donnas
- Meritocracy
- Highly personal knowledge, shared only with trusted individuals (including very private Associations)
- Learn by doing on teams (Take responsibility for your own learning)
- Quality= do what offers the most learning within time and budget constraints that delivers what the customer says they want (so my contract will get renewed)
