The Fall and Rise of Project Management - a bit of the history of PM

Many executives wonder about the real value and applicability of project management in their companies. If you have heard about it in any lecture or if you have not fed up that his old friend and idea enthusiast commenting on the subject should also already have asked the same thing: how far is worth investing time and money to ensure good project management? This same question has been asked and repeated often by several people involved in projects of the different complexities.

To better understand where it all started one must go back in time. Since the time of the pyramids, issues and concepts related to project management, they were already being felt. The term "work" has been scientifically defined by Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), the first to consider a type of process design. But only after the second world war is that project management techniques were defined and grouped in order to be considered a discipline. 

The United States Department of Defense (DOD) created the WBS concept as part of the Polaris mobile submarine-launched ballistic missile project. After completing the project, the DOD published the work breakdown structure it used and mandated the following of this procedure in future projects of this scope and size. WBS is an exhaustive, hierarchical tree structure of deliverables and tasks that need to be performed to complete a project. Later adopted by the private sector, the WBS remains one of the most common and useful project management tools. The Polaris program (1957-58), leveraged network diagramming tools such as PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) and many other terms today used as a "war room", are also some contributions from that time.

From the European side It all begun in the year 1964. A European aircraft project manager, Pierre Koch of France, invited Dick Vullinghs from The Netherlands and Roland Gutsch from Germany to discuss the benefits of the Critical Path Method (CPM) as a management approach. CPM showed a way to manage large projects with international sponsors, uncertain results as well as with complex influences and dependencies from different technical disciplines. This group was chaired by Yves Eugene from AFIRO (Association Fran?aise d′Informatique et de Recherche Opérationnelle). Professor Arnold Kaufmann suggested the formation of an INTERnational NETwork, the INTERNET.

In 1965, this group of people founded the IMSA (International Management Systems Association), independent from companies and officially located in Switzerland, the most respected and politically neutral country in Western Europe in these days of the “Cold War”. Two years later the Czechoslovak Project Management Science Group issued invitations to join the first “all-state” conference on the “Methods of Network Analysis” in Prague. PhD Vladimira Machova was the host beside the political officials in those days. Then, with the sponsorship of the International Computer Centre in Rome, managed by Professor Claude Berge, the first International World Congress took place in Vienna. From then on INTERNET was the official association name. 

After the military, construction, automotive, aerospace and film were also major sponsors of the discipline growth, quickly realizing how much they could be benefiting through this approach. Managing multi-disciplinary teams and achievement of goals within only finite periods of time and resource limitations seemed more feasible. And every day there are new studies and techniques that support the areas of knowledge involved in project management. Concepts such as the companies projectized structure and the development of the PMOs (Project Management Office), started to be present in our daily lives.

Like everything in human history, this movement did not happen by chance. We must observe the world of the context in which we live today, to understand the meaning of such a revolution. Companies and their professionals spend today by continuous change processes to evolve according to the direction the world points. However great the differences of opinion cannot be ignored the effects of globalization, the technology that surrounds us, the yearnings of society that we are part, and especially the increasingly impatient, intolerant, and demanding customer ourselves. 

Thoughts on quality have evolved much since Deming, Crosby and Juran. The tendency is to turn even commodity in a world where more and more the experience provided by products and services became the key to satisfaction. But this evolution is not trivial. You must be able to adapt, it is often necessary to literally change the modus operandi and the way of thinking in order to evolve. Each new step, a change, and every change, a new project.

The vision-based processes have led the traditional view of management based projects in process ... this is the Rise of Project Management!

But… Why the traditional view in project management does not generate effective results? It seems that this approach goes against the nature of the process based phenomenon! The traditional approach, targeting areas of knowledge and project life cycle, process-oriented is counter-intuitive nature of the project. But why it has been so successful in MBAs and courses in general?

The fact is that the nature of the phenomenon "project" is not explored in its completeness to be complex. At conferences, articles and reflections came to some possible settings:

• project is an intervention in a perennial system, creating a time frame for system optimization, and increase your performance 
• identifying design is an improvement in the status quo, which has the function of printing a break with the current reality.
• project is an exercise of the human psyche in the quest for change of reality to find your comfort zone.

Boutinet (1999), includes a comprehensive definition, looking Project as a phenomenon under the scope of anthropology. He points out that every project supposes break from the present and promises for the future. To Project means trying to break a comfortable state to risk, through a period of instability and seek stability due to the promise that each project contains state better than the present. A project can be taken forward as a promise certain breaks. The promises made visible the possible fields of action, compromising its actors and authors. 

The issue is that key stakeholders are supposed to participate and validate the chance… Within this logic, the concept of psychological contract is coupled with the perfection of a melody.

The dominant logic in the traditional project management, and comes from the 80, where the Cartesian view of the world still did not have the processing power coming from the microcomputer. The quality management tools were the big news at the time. The Total Quality Management (TQM) and the vision of the business process, or Business Process Model (BPM) later brought the logic of reengineering. Until then everything under control and focus on quality and lifecycle of production and in reducing costs was the center of attention. The number of interactions were different.

Having a standard, with an overview of which elements to look for a more effective project management is interesting, help in the language of the constitution in common, however this may be the beginning of the journey. I say this because from the 90s, we recognize the phenomenon of globalization and the consequent need for interaction of different peoples, different cultures and different languages to be able to deliver a multidisciplinary approach.

 Since then the integration and hypercompetitive environment began to emerge ... organizations had to find a way to survive, adapting to the environment. This constant adaptation of their products and services to shape the new unified culture accelerated the life cycle of products, and consequently of the technologies involved. This was the beginning of the fall of Project Manajement.

Translation in this scenario that the complexity (which for purposes of this post means weaving together) takes the manager's challenge to develop a systemic view, both as a team. Its combination of capacity between different tools to address new problems and reality of settings is the key to competitiveness. No matter the tool, but the results and benefits achieved! Integration between business vision (results), people (wills) and tools are the key to project management of an era where the truth today is obsolete tomorrow. Flexibility actions and skills configuration (creation of a team like neural network), this is the profile expected.

How to develop this professional in project management? The first step is to have a way to measure what skills are in this context. With this history can give direction to the professional which points to develop, and which way to go.

For the company, this measure serves as a measure of the ability of complexity in projects that the individual is able to handle project management. Imagine the people sector of an organization to be able to map the skills of professionals in project management and allocate them according to their proven skills! Dream? No! Reality. The competency model (as in the example below) by level is a possible way. In addition to presenting metrics for the organization, can be the basis for a career model project manager.

The fact is that far beyond the technical skills, a phenomenon that develops under the contextual competences (organizational culture) and behavioral (individual culture) is the psychological contract to understand the development of a focused framework for building skills in generation performance, a key issue to note is how to keep the team committed to the organization's results. It is notoriously observed in project management market lack of commitment, in which the temporary nature of the activity tends to generate a high turnover, which can be a factor that threatens the generation of value and knowledge management.

How to attract and retain committed people and that add value to the organization is a key issue for understanding the organizational behavior. One approach to understanding this issue is related to the creation of a professional psychological contract with the company. So psychological contracts are the beliefs of individuals about the reciprocal obligations between them and their organizations.

Focus on traditional view? I have no doubt about the importance of technical tools, but we can not forget: project management is an applied social science and as such cultural phenomena, both organizational, territorial as are major factors in the decision making of the project manager! The tools and techniques, and these are part, but do not generate any value without people! Competences are going to rise and project managers will understand simple fact of a project: it fits the balance of stakeholders interests… As organizations are the extension of the ego of top management… Will PM rise from the ashes as a phoenix, integrating business, people and technic? Time will tell…