Project Management… Science or Crusade? Red Pill or Blue?

So this is my first post on R-Cubed Project Management and I thought long and hard about what the first rant would be because that’s really what I am doing here, ranting. I decided to go with a Matrix/Transformers motif ergo the little YouTube snippet with the apropos Red Pill "Truth"/Blue Pill "Blind Faith" dialogue; Project Management Methodologies/Tools/Processes...Science "Red Pill" or Crusade "Blue Pill".

Being a project management professional for the last 10 years I have seen my fair share of project management flavors of the month: Agile, PMBOK, LEAN, XP, Scrum, etc. What gets me standing on a soap box is that these PM Tools, (cause that is what they are tools) come complete with pushy evangelists and "over-internalizing" chest thumping adopters.

Instead of looking at the problem space that an individual organization faces and what tools that the scope of the project management profession has developed i.e.: Agile, Scrum, XP, LEAN, PMBOK. These so-called "practitioners" adhere blindly to a methodology or worse a PM Tool Suite thinking that it will miraculously solve all of their operational woes. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is no magic bullet or cure to project management or management/leadership in general. The only thing I can think of that would come close to a cure for project management/leadership woes is to look at it scientifically as opposed to taking it on like a crusade.

Selling Agile processes is not project management.

Identifying how applicable and how Agile processes can be implemented and thereby prove a value add is project management. The idea that having multiple iterations and weekly meetings is not being "Agile"; its simply having multiple iterations and weekly meetings. Thinking that any one methodology or any particular part of a "methodology" means you are doing it 100% is dangerous ground to stand on and since being in Project Management means you try to find the least dangerous ground to stand on, it would make sense to pause and re-evaluate such decisions.

Science or "Scientia" in the latin means "to Know" which later spawned the Scientific Method meaning "to know" via the practice of observation and experimentation. This concept has a couple implications on this issue:

• It takes away the marketing pull of Methodologies/Canned Workflow Tools as a panacea for Project Management.
• It applies a reason/rational approach to how we make our management decisions this includes what methodologies/processes/tools we adopt.

Applying a scientific approach divests us of the emotional clamor of "crusades" to handle projects in an "Agile" fashion or a "Lean" process. It allows the Project Manager or decision maker to evaluate the methodologies/tools/processes to make decision on what makes best sense to solve the business problem. After all we are in the business of business not thumping the latest management mantra. Just because an expert says that true blue Agile works best at XYZ company doesn’t mean that true blue Agile will work for yours. It may take a hybridization of different methodologies, tools, and processes to get it just right for the decision maker and their organization.

Crusades, generally speaking have rarely ever been a good idea because a crusade takes rationality out of the equation and replaces it with faith. Effectively saying "who ever believes hard enough will win out in the end". It's rings with the tone of "God Wills it". I don’t presume to know the "Will of God" or to speak for him. I will however take my "God-given" brain and apply rational thought to my selection of methodologies, tools , and processes to solve the business problems presented to me, because it makes sense and not because the "Agile" gods will it.

-Optimal Optimus