PMI Journal April Review

PMI Journal April Review

Forgive me, this ran a little long. Long enough to deal with some criticism and not long enough to deal with some of my thoughts.

This was the first edition of the Project Management Journal (PMJ) for the new editor Hans Georg Gemunden although the April edition was edited by the outgoing editor. I am using my blog to tackle one of two of the articles in the journal and see if I can gleam some practical usability for my students and practicing project managers.  It is the mission of the PMJ to provide value to both theory and practice of project management. It is consistent with this vision that I look at the articles in the PMJ for both their value to enhancing our understanding of project management and providing information that enables project managers is execute projects more effectively and efficiently.

I understand the need for academic writing. The purpose of this style of writing focuses on accuracy and I spent a great deal of time in my doctoral work including my dissertation developing an appropriate writing style. It is a language shared by academicians but often frustrates at least it did for me developing the style and wading through journals. So, I reflect on articles and will provide some thoughts here with my focus more on the applicability of the information provided in the PMJ articles I select.

I am interested in both complex project and risk so I found Hans Thamhain’s article Managing Risk in Complex Projects,in the April edition of the PMJ appealing. The article is a continuation of research done on risk and complex projects done by Thamhain.  He provided a good overview of research on risk and focused on known and unknown risk factors. In describing unknow risk factors he referred to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident in the Golf Coast and described it as predictable and preventable and concluded that our current systems and processes do not allow us to predict and managing these risks. Without much more information, this is a premature conclusion. I believe we have sufficient systems and processes; they were just not applied in this case.

Thamhain’s definition of risk varies a little from PMI even though he references PMI. He also developed four categories of risk uncertainty. I typically use three but four is OK. The same with potential impact, his continuum is divided into four categories rather than the typical three. His model also use Shenar’s work on complexity categorization and uses project, program and array. The use of four categories for uncertainty and impact may bring more clarity but the complexity level is too simplistic.

Thamhain identifies his research methodology as Action Research which, simply put, is a research method for testing a model. There are problems with some of the process such as data collection and analysis but again minor issues only important to research nerds (like me). Although, PMI might want to look at the research methods, clarity of writing as well as the applicability of the findings in solicitation and publications of research. With that said, I am not challenging any of the findings base on research methods.

The major conclusion from the research is that risks do not affect all projects equally. I suspect most experienced project managers would have agreed with this statement but is nice to have your beliefs supported with research. Thamhain presented a method for analyzing risk and I believe that the model will provide value to project managers, once you are able to wade through the academic writing..  What we don’t know about this methodology is it any better than ones we might be using now? We know it is better than nothing. How this approach might compare to others might be a good research topic.

Russ