Dr. James T. Brown, PMP, offers a number of interesting observations about achieving the right balance between methodology and pragmatism in his PM World Today Viewpoints article, entitled: Why Your Project Management Methodology Doesn’t Matter Much. His central thesis is: “It is not the methodology that is the primary factor of success. It is the leadership!”
Dr. Brown encourages clients to focus on to beware that, “too much methodology can contribute to project failure.” He suggests: “Strong leadership is striking a balance between people dependency and process dependency with respect to the given methodology.”
Art’s Comments:
Dr. Brown is right to caution about the over-reliance on methodology as a guarantee of success. In particular, I’ve worked around early-career Project Managers that with the best of intentions have ridden the methodology horse all the way to project failure. By the same token, I’ve worked in client organizations where the leadership was either too cavalier about supporting the methodology or falsely assumed that they once the chosen methodology was in place, their job was complete.
An organization’s leaders must be actively involved in supporting project success, and part of their role is serving as the gatekeeper on when methodology can be sacrificed on the altar of project progress. Project Managers must be astute enough to recognize the early warning signs of methodology overload and engage their project teams, sponsors and senior leadership on the issues so that changes to the process can be properly vetted and concluded.
“One Size Does Not Fit All”
I love Dr. Brown’s phrase: “Project Management is simply Structured, Organized, Common Sense.” He suggests that if requirements are relatively fluid and the project contains high uncertainty, then is common sense to choose an iterative method. Alternatively, mission-critical projects demand a strict development methodology to minimize risk and optimize chances for success.
Art’s Comments:
Leadership plays a critical role in assessing the importance of a project to a firm’s goals or strategies. Those projects deemed mission critical merit strict (but not unyielding) adherence to a defined methodology. An established software firm with many products may be able to relax time constraints on smaller or lower priority projects without suffering significant repercussions. Alternatively, an early-stage firm dependent upon a new release to satisfy early adopter clients can ill afford to deviate from a methodology that will ensure an on-time release in line with customer requirements. Methodology and reasons for violating or adapting the methodology should be considered in the initial project planning and prioritization phases and communicated to all stakeholders.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
As organizations grow increasingly dependent upon project execution and professional project management practices to drive strategy execution, a firm’s leaders have to be smart enough and engaged enough to recognize an imbalance between process and people. Methodologies are guidelines to be strictly or liberally adhered to depending upon circumstances. Good leadership in this sense means tuning in to project activities at a level sufficient to ensure that the right approaches are being applied for the right reasons. While your methodology might have its champions, don’t lose track of the fact that the methodology must enable success, not fight it.
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