The refrain in our title was made infamous (though its ironic that he had no idea he was making it infamous, for he was just telling it as he understood it perfectly) by Donald Rumsfeld once. I hand it to him; the man had the grasp, he just couldn’t articulate it in a good sound bite the rest of us needed so badly.
Many thanks for that book title, Rummy!
So what the hell am I talking about? Well, I’m midway through my Essentials of Project Management course at Villanova University’s online school, a wonderful opportunity through University Alliance to take part in an online course that shores up the bits of project management I could use help with. Frankly, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so that meant all of the bits. As my first post indicated, you could take away that I was a bit of a novice about PM when I first arrived in the Moses basket outside Arras People’s offices three years, equipped only with experience in social media, journalism, a few Adobe packages and a dodie with the word “Desire” written on the front.
Time wears on (or wears out), but I’ve come a ways, and I’ve relished the course’s interactive nature (though with live courses held at 2am local time*, I can only give so much), it’s full-on approach through online lectures, the readings PMBoK Fourth edition guide from the Project Management Institute (PMI), and the lecture-accompanying study guides that are fabulous. Like the mascot of this famed suburban Philadelphia university, I feel like a Wildcat, attacking the project management zone defence (basketball reference to the uninitiated!)
You come into courses with prejudices, and I thought I’d share with you where I stand on three particular pre-judgings…
1. Project Management Training Can Only Go So Far – Branch Rickey’s revolutionary scientific methodology to the sport of baseball was justified by the so-called “Mahatma” as “blamed good, practical theory.” I’m not there yet; the theory needs its proper application in a project setting. That said, I’m getting plenty to work with: the Essentials course gives it through a heavy dose of the PMI solution. I get the feeling that if all certified PMPs work within this framework, practical application of the theory has turned up some solid results, so long as the PMP (a certification you can’t fake your way through due to the heavy-hand of the practical experience requirement) is making it fit around the project they manage, and not the other way around.
I was but a mere babe when I arrived at Arras People in 2008. Now through their conjunction course with Villanova University, I'm a PM Wildcat!
2. PMI + UK Practitioners = Meh… - It was our concern when the free course opportunity was first announced that a PMI-laden course might not play well in the UK as it does in the US. After reading through PMBoK and taking in lectures to date, my novice perspective remains; What’s all the fuss about? PMI lays out the 42 processes through 5 groups and 9 knowledge areas, attacking each area of PM with instructors capable of demonstrating top of their head know-how and examples to support the claims. It’s a good perspective, strengthened immensely by the instructors’ sincere attempts to weave in the importance of the on-the-job elements. It’s nothing short of brilliant, IMHO: as you can’t cheat the experience element of the PMI certifications, Villanova wisely instructs you in a real-world atmosphere, asking about the perspective you take to things like scope management or quality control in your own real-life projects. Why wouldn’t they? Personally, the solid stakeholder management perspective has left an impact on me, giving life to the ugly nature of the workplace politics that engulf so many well-intentioned but ultimately green PMs each day. Summarily and frankly, the PMI vs. UK conundrum feels like pointless semantics when you’re speaking the terminology in a very familiar language to begin with. My advice: if you think an outside governing body’s methods and practises go astray from your career prospects, you’re forgetting that a variety of views that expand upon your knowledge expand your capabilities as well. Learn as much of you can, and you – the project manager – can pick through what matters for your project. If you can’t walk away with something useful from the PMBoK Guide, I really don’t know what to tell you.
3. “Change” is foul-language in the workplace sometimes – The appeal of an online learning course, to me, is the lectures that are incapable of playing class favourites while cutting out the education dilemmas we face today, namely class sizes and personalisation. Online instruction feels so one-to-one in my view that even if you have to find electronic manners in which to ask questions and elicit feedback, you can feel the classroom politics slip away. With this change in mind, one notion that Villanova’s instructors confirmed in my suspicious nature was that change itself in a workplace structure is akin to a cuss word. People are set in their ways and they like having the feel for the ebb-and-flow of their work day mapped out. The project manager who needs new team members that don’t necessarily have the same priorities as you do for the project’s success are a testament to those people management skills you’re going to need. Change happens in project management, whether your project is creating it to the business, or you’re valuing the proper communication approaches to each stakeholder you face.
Four more weeks to go, and I’m to date I’m a thoroughly changed man. Bring out quality management for week 5 and beyond!
*-In fairness, the content of those live sessions is made available, so no big whoop!
Images courtesy Medill DC (Rumsfeld), and mcclave (Villanova baby) re-used with permission.
