1 + 1 Does Not Always Equal 2

Recently I was tagged in a discussion on the PMBOK® and it applicability to methodologies outside the waterfall project management world. The article is fine and I do not have a lot to pick on. It is an opinion and that is the point of having open and transparent dialog. In the ensuing comments, though, the following question was asked, which I think should be explored in a separate thread of its own:

“Should we strive to establish a common global standard for project delivery? ... Nobody questions a CFO or a legal council or an auditor (or a medical doctor) like project managers are challenged - this is what PMI wants to change (quoting our new CEO).”

There are two questions here. The overt one about standards and the second about the questioning of other professions.

Where Are There Global Standard Appropriate?

I am not sure we should try to establish a common global standard for project delivery. My reasoning may take a little to explain. All of the vocations mentioned have certifications and hundreds of hours of training, to my knowledge, however, only one has a quasi-standard—accounting. I believe all US accountants are held to the GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).

Keeping analogies between lawyers and plecostomus aside, all lawyers in the US have to pass a bar exam. This shows they know that law, but this does not that they are striving for the truth. They are striving to make their opinion stick. They are held to the law, but not the truth.

As for doctors, I cannot get an agreement on what my blood pressure should be. One doctor says for my age my blood pressure should be below 130/70 and another says below 150/80. The same is true for many other "quantitative" tests. The reason is that everyone is different. If I ran a project like doctors ran their practices, it would be shameful. You can read about one of my encounters in the article One More Team Member to Manage... the Doctor.

There are some standards out their for auditors, but they pertain only to given fields. Financial audits have the GAAP, however other auditors for manufacturing, project, operations, and the like have different accepted procedures they try to use as a "standard." As a project auditor, I do not use the PMBOK® as a guide. There are many other factors not even addressed in the PMBOK® that guide my decisions. My book Rescue the Problem Project lays out that process and, my latest book, Filling Execution Gaps, talks about where the root causes of failure are found--the problems are in the organization and only the symptoms show up in the project.

Project Management is Different

I liken being a project manager to that of being a CEO rather than an accountant, doctor, lawyer, or the like. The project is more like a standalone business. There are needs for accounting and execution/operational skills. The project manager needs to track and adjust for risk, much like a CEO. The project manager, also, needs to select and develop a team that he or she thinks will attain the project’s vision, much similar to that of the CEO. The project manager develops a plan with his or her team to meet the vision. Then the project manager has to lead. All just like that of a CEO.

There is no “standard” for being a CEO. CEOs may have individual playbooks, but no standard. Parts of their business may follow GAAP, an ISO quality standard, or something else. But there is not a standard for running a business.

Project management has to deal with quickly evolving business situations. Conditions that change at an ever increasing rate in a world driven by VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). The business world figured this out a decade or so before the US military coined the term. The best description of this (even though it is a bit long winded and self-serving) is by Stanley McChrystal in his book Team of Teams (2015). Here he describes how the US armed services had to change their “project model” to address the threats they were facing in the Middle East. His point was that new threats need new models. Standards don’t work well with that approach.

CEOs, project managers, and generals dealing in a VUCA world need something else. They need people. Leadership is a core competence. Only 20% of the project manager’s job is technical. Hence only 20% of the job will ever be covered by a standard. Even the PMBOK admits that 80% of a project manager’s time is spent communicating, I know that I spend well over 80% of my time on a project dealing with people. No standard helps me with that.

Questioning other Professions like we Question Project Managers?

I am firm believer that we should question executives, corporate executives, highly trained professionals just as we should project managers. As the previous comment on physicians mentioned, I am on record for questioning doctors and, by doing so, saving my wife's life. It does not take much reading of the news to find yet more corporate executives and politicians who have let power go to their heads and feel they are above the law or can be guided by some other form of self-serving ethics. Of course or memories of the financial crises of 2008 banking bubble, 2000-2002 Enron-Worldcom-Tyco-ad-nauseam, or, in the US, the 1980s savings and loan scandals fade quickly. I am sure people from other countries can list their favorites. Questioning is good. Bring it on. It makes me a better project manager.

Even the thousands of pages in the GAAP did not stop these issues that hurt millions of people. We need more people to ask questions. For these scandals to happen, did we become complacent in the laws and standards, blinded by greed, or both?

Throw out the PMBOK?

This does not mean that we throw out the PMBOK®. Absolutely, not. It has its place. However, I doubt it will ever become the end all in project management. There may need to be two or three different standards and some areas may continue to be an open frontier. The GAAP manual on my bookshelf is dated at 1994 and about 900 pages. The 2019 GAAP is 1500 pages, but there are special editions for non-profits, government, and international accounting (the latter being more than 5,300 pages). The GAAP has a more defined domain where 1 + 1 will always equal 2. In project management, we are too often dealing with very complex systems where trying to run the same test twice results in vastly different answers. In complex systems, 1 + 1 will not always equal two—because you never really have the same system twice. That is the problem with jobs that are so reliant on people's whims. Nothing is standard.

I would love to hear your thoughts.