The February edition (vol 44,no 1) arrived today and I took some
time to explore the articles and see if I could extract some thoughts.
My first thought is that the Journal is not for project management
practitioners. I learned to read and write in a similar style while working on
my doctorate and my dissertation. The language used in the PM Journal is primarily
used by academics and not by the half a million PMPs out there. If there is a
gap between the writing style of academics who do the research and the
practitioners who read it, I wonder how we will be able to develop and apply
much of the knowledge that is developed.
When doctors read medical journals they often look for
applications that affect their ability to provide better care to patients. The
articles in the journal do not seem to have a similar focus on practical
application. Still, some of the research will have value and as our profession
develops, I suspect research will become more focused and applicable.
With this in mind I summarized two articles. I am interested in
what you think.
Russ
The first article A Bayesian Approach to Improve
Estimates at Completion in Earned Value Management was basically a
very complex statistical process of taking expert opinions and generating an
estimate of project completion. With 18 charts and the use of 10 different
equations, (none found in the PMBOK) the authors demonstrated how they
calculated estimates at completion. The authors appear to acknowledge that you
would need to be a highly qualified statistician to understand their formulas
and I acknowledge that I didn’t. The intent of the article was to provide a
foundation for a software package that would be user friendly. The article did
not describe how the authors obtained the expert opinion. To me, any output
generated from expert opinion, no matter how sophisticated the calculation
methods is very dependent on the quality and method of gathering expert
opinion.
The article I found most relevant to project management practice
was the article by Brian Hobbs (who I have read and enjoy) and Claude Besner of
the University of Quebec, Montreal. Contextualized Project Management
Practices: A Cluster Analysis of Practices and Best Practices reflected on
the data that was derived from a survey with approximately 2,500 respondents.
Among the findings I found the link between the projects with well defined
definitions and project success intuitive but it is nice to see it confirmed
with research. In a gross over simplification of the findings, Hobbs and Besner
found that across projects, organizations with mature project management
practices that use tools and techniques to develop well defined projects are
more successful. They also found five best practices across project contexts;
initial planning, use of databases, business case definition, baseline change
management, and team management. I am curious about how we manage
projects across different industries and within different contexts and I think
this research added to our knowledge. These are incremental steps in our understanding
but at this level of research, exploring our advancement of project management
knowledge will be incremental.
