There have been many thought-provoking discussions on effective project management steered by Mark Mullaly and other Projects@Work contributors. I am quite in agreement with Mullaly’s statement that "processes that don't create or sustain value are not going to last very long," and I agree that there is no single right answer when it comes to invoking PMBOK, Prince2, Critical Path or Critical Chain as a success-mantra. As Mullaly says in Keep on Evolving (April 7, 2005), "it depends."

 

However, what does "it depends" really mean in this context? Is it like a product-positioning activity where you keep trying various positioning statements and eventually one will hit the jackpot for you? It might be worthwhile to stop thinking of project management in isolation. The challenge is no longer to choose the right methodology.

 

There have been myriad discussions on various SDLC methodologies such as Waterfall or Agile, and project management methodologies such as PMBOK, Prince2, CPM or CCPM — all trying to find a means to guarantee project success. Subconsciously, all of us understand that these two frameworks go hand in hand for a successful execution of a project. However, we haven’t given much thought on churning the true value out of them. When they go hand in hand, can we hedge our bets on a combination of methodologies and tools?

 

In my opinion, it definitely makes a case to use tools that give the project manager an option to use a specific project management methodology in combination with a specific SDLC methodology. It would be a good idea to make use of such combinations as a process template and then let different projects be executed on various process templates. At the end of each project, verify and validate which combination worked well. This would give a quantitative answer (repeatability index, reproduce ability index and variation from goals) to a problem that is often debated very subjectively. Base lining and sharing this information would save much sweat, pain and blood for others.

 

The same tool should provide a fair amount of BPM capabilities so that those process templates are well defined and laid out. Quantitative feedback should be used to improve these templates. For quality, maybe you are using Six Sigma for better performance when it might be overkill. You could try adding another item (CMMi, for example) to your earlier combination of methodologies, i.e., (PMBOK + Waterfall + CMMi) or (PMBOK + Extreme + Six Sigma).

 

Quite often we end up working on a single track and trying to improve it over a period of years. It might be worth experimenting with several tracks during this period. This could become a scientific means of answering, "it depends."

 

The last parameter that is of prime importance is collaboration, which must be seamlessly woven into your project management, SDLC and BPM framework.

 

Merely chasing a standalone methodology is not going to buy you an extra hour unless you are empowered with a set of tools that gives you a workbench to experiment with a bigger improvement picture in mind.

 

 

Prabhas Sinha

Product Manager

Digité Inc., a provider of enterprise solution for IT portfolio and process governance