Project Management Misconceptions and the Quest for Respect

Ever feel like the unsung hero in the office, tirelessly managing projects but somehow always overlooked? Step into the spotlight with us as we uncover the hidden battles of project management. With insights into why this essential discipline is often sidelined, we're tearing down the stereotypes and showcasing how vital it is to the success of any organization. From the rise of trendier methodologies to the often-unseen strategic importance of the Project Management Office, we're championing the cause for recognition and respect.

As we journey through the corridors of corporate strategy, we'll expose the harsh realities and inconsistent appreciation for project managers. The undervaluation of project management compared to departments like HR and IT is a stark contrast we can no longer ignore. We're laying bare the truth behind the project success rates and the imperative for executive buy-in. With poignant examples and a clarion call for change, this episode is an eye-opener for anyone who's ever doubted the power of well-executed project management.

On the flip side, it's not just about getting the credit—it's about earning it through ethical leadership and effective communication. We delve into the heart of what it means to be a project manager with integrity, exploring how the courage to speak up and the wisdom to say 'no' can transform project outcomes. This isn't just a discussion—it's a rallying cry for project managers everywhere to stand tall, hold fast to their principles, and navigate their ships through the churning project seas with honor and skill.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to the 4PM podcast. My name is Munir Ajam and I'm the founder and CEO of Arook Project Management. My core passion is project management and community development. I came to you with decades of global experience. I have worked on projects in various industries, countries and roles. In this podcast, I aim to help you and your organization transform how to lead your change initiatives with the 4PMs. What are the 4PMs? 4 PMs stand for project program, product delivery and portfolio management. It is all about integrations to deliver value. We want to hear from you, so please share your feedback and suggestions. Enjoy your listening. Good day, munir Ajam was another episode of the 4pm podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Today's topic is a bit of sharing some frustration. Maybe I hope it will not sound like, you know, venting or anything. I want to address some issues and some concern I have been writing about, you know, either on my blog or on LinkedIn, and so I'm going to basically call this podcast as how did we fail as a project management community? Now, why do I say that? Because when we go online every day, I'm one of those people who probably as soon as I open my computer, I have LinkedIn open, and probably one of the last things I close it when I go to sleep at night, and obviously there are many, many posts online from individual organizations, professional associations, that talk about project management, and the same we see is that there's a lot of debates, often endless debates, and I am guilty of that. I am one of those people who participated in some of these debates. That is adding no value. What we still see, what we see is going on, is that we still see a high degree of failures. So let me try to put things into perspective into this open podcast.

Speaker 1: 2:40

I know, historically, going back to tens and hundreds, maybe years or so, we have built space station, we have built giant dams, highways, bridges, buildings, unique structure, leading software and probably numerous other things that have used project management. And how did we achieve those results? How did you achieve those space station or the giant dams or the super tall buildings? We achieved them through project management. Good, bad or ugly, we have used project management. However, we were able to deliver those projects successfully. So we all would agree that those projects, you know, from the perspective of business or strategic objective, they're successful. You know Sydney Opera House project management wise, it was a disaster. However, it left a landmark that everybody around the world know immediately when they see it this is Sydney, australia. Or when we look at Burj Khalifa, we know this is Dubai, united Arab Emirates. So we have accomplished those things through project. Maybe we did not do as good a job as I mentioned. Maybe we've done a great job in terms of project management. That's why, if you listen to our podcast, we have a session on the four-dimensional project success, where we separate project management success from product success. However, the common feature I want to repeat and repeat and repeat is that all of these great things, we have achieved them through working through project and through project management.

Speaker 1: 4:22

Yet the sad reality is project management is becoming a bad word. As a startup focusing on technology in project management, I cannot tell you how often mentors and advisors told me don't talk about project management. Executive, don't care about project management. Investors don't care about project management. You should think about even one time an advisor who was in project management told me, talk about time management is probably a better topic, and I started to think and reflect back that. Why is that? Well, obviously there are many things happening and I'll try to explain as many of them, forgive me, so in this episode the thought might be a little bit divergent and in different places, but all evolved around this idea is that how did we fail project management as a community? So what I'm saying is, despite all of these successes that happened through project program and project management and program management, project management is becoming a bad word.

Speaker 1: 5:27

We hear a statement and this has come from a recent article that I wrote on LinkedIn. We hear a statement like who needs project? We work differently. You know, maybe I need to put this murky face, but you don't see my face. Who needs project management? We have Six Sigma. Years ago, we used to hear that, oh, project management is project management. We have Six Sigma. Years ago, we used to hear that, oh, project management is dying because now we have Six Sigma. Well, apparently Six Sigma almost died and project management is still here.

Speaker 1: 5:54

Another thing we hear who needs project? We work through product. This is some of the recent discussion I've had online. Who needs project management? We have Scrum online. Who need project management? We have Scrum. We have SAFE and fill in the blank for a method of choice, or the sub-major, as they say.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Who needs project? We have initiative, endeavors and adventures. Who need the PMO? Yet we do not hear who needs HR, who needs IT or who needs finance. We hear about traditional being bad. Therefore, we need agile. Agile is not working.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Ah, we need hybrid, although we still have no clue what hybrid is, and recently we've seen one publication from one leading association talk oh, it really doesn't matter what approach you use. Hybrid is the way to go. And here you go, we're going to give you some sample of hybrid. Well, the whole idea of hybrid right, is that you know you select what is best for your project. If we talk about hybrid being tailored, you know you select what's being best for your project. So once you start giving me prescription, like the PMO in the old days and some association came up with oh, the PMO is either supportive directive or controlling what the heck right? Pmo should be? A spectrum. It could be anything. There could be a lot of variety of what PMO is. When you try to force things into three dimensions, then everybody starts to think in those dimensions. Same thing now with traditional is bad. We need agile. Agile is not working. We need hybrid, hybrid. You know it's okay. Maybe we need digital. And now, of course, everybody's talking about AI. Is the future, yeah. So my question is jokingly. Should we all retire and go home and let AI take over?

Speaker 1: 7:46

I think part of the fundamental issue relate to this. These kind of comment is that again, we fail as a community. What do I mean by that? Well, if we think about one thing I just said, but maybe I didn't emphasize why do do we have PMOs, not PMDs, and the idea of project management department? Why an organization that's large enough to have department?

Speaker 1: 8:11

Before anybody jumped on me said, oh, you know, we don't do things like HR, we don't need HR departments. Well, if you are in a small company, like right now in my company, I am the HR, I am the IT. Well, not that bad, but almost right when you work in a startup. However, when we are, you work in a company that is large enough to have department, even though the department could be one or two people only at that time, or much bigger department, right, we have HR departments. And guess what HR work on projects. They have project, right, they might outsource it to IT or outsource it totally outside of the company, but they do have project. We have finance department, and guess what? We have finance project. We have IT department. And guess what IT work on projects, right, even marketing work on projects, engineering work on project. So why all of these functions have department and organization.

Speaker 1: 9:10

But project management is okay to be in office. I can understand the CEO office. You know few people that support the CEO or the chairman office, few people that support the chairman, right. But the whole idea of an office, that means it is an office, right, it is something of an office. That means it is an office. Right, it is something obviously not contained in one room, but the idea is it's something small, it's there to usually use to support something. So why project management is an office? It, hr, finance, all of these support and do project, but project is not project management and do project, but project is not project management. The function is not recognized enough to be equal function to HR and IT to be a department.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Now the funny thing is and again all of this relates to why we failed as a community is that we created a separate community Instead of uniting and working together in project management. Now you find a lot of PMOs and PMO consultant and PMO association or group, right, promoting PMO is almost something like it's independent of project management, right, it's not. It's the same PMO is supposed to build the process and manage the process. For managing project, whether it have project manager inside it or not, it doesn't really matter, right? So why would HR, it, finance, all of these have function but project management is not? Now, why it doesn't? For many reasons. One of them is because we failed as a community. I repeat that statement Now, why we failed as a community?

Speaker 1: 10:56

Because often enough, when we build these PMOs in many organizations because we don't understand project management, but yet we want to try to build PMOs in many organizations because we don't understand project management, but yet we want to try to build PMOs, as a result of that, we build PMOs that are dysfunctional. What do I mean by that? Many PMOs I've seen over the decade. In one organization I've seen they implemented a PMO and dismantled three PMOs within 10 years. So we build a PMO, we use it for a while, for some reason it's not working or manager is not happy kill it. And then maybe another executive come on board said, ah, we need a PMO, let's build it again and again and again and again. Why are we failing? Now, I know a lot of PMOs are doing very good job and great job, so I'm not generalizing. However, I'm talking about a bit of a history, right? So when we have these PMOs become a police force, become where the PMO is limited to a couple of people focusing on reporting and chasing project managers for report, instead of integrating project management office with project management within the organization, and as a result of that, we've seen a lot of damage, not only PMO.

Speaker 1: 12:08

So let me try to summarize some of the key points I've raised. We had problem with project management. We thought the answer was PMO. Pmo did not solve the problem. So, as a result of I'm an executive and currently I'm an executive, but obviously I'm an executive project management person. But let's say, if I am an executive in a different organization that does not have a lot of experience and knowledge in project management, right, and I see my project are often becoming failure or, almost by default, every project, or most project, will end up over budget or behind schedule or significantly delayed, if it doesn't fail totally, and we end up having to cancel it. As an executive, I'm seeing failure. I'm seeing more failure than success.

Speaker 1: 12:59

Now, this is not an opinion. A lot of the statistics on this show that you know, in mega projects, these are over a billion dollars. So these are the mega projects. According to a major study by the Independent Project Analysis, only 35% of those projects are successful and in some domains it's even 20%, talking about half a percent. Half a percent of all projects, especially in the infrastructure and all of those areas that are actually successful in terms of cost, schedule and objective. You know information or surveys from PMI talked about more than 70% of construction projects are suffering from cost or schedule problems.

Speaker 1: 13:46

I know many people might not like the chaos and sandwich group, but they've been doing things for 30 years and they're telling us that at least only one-third of IT projects or less are considered successful. The rest are challenged or failed. So we have this significant problem. Yet professional associations have existed for 50, 60 years or so. Pmo organizations have existed for many years. Certifications have existed for 40 years plus, yet we are not able to improve project success. So executives see that. So they don't trust us. They don't trust that project management is the answer and this is why project management is becoming a bad word. I know I might be being a bit emotional about it and I'm basically sharing some. Maybe my opinion and many other people might not agree with me, but think about that. You know. Sleep on this. Listen to this podcast again, maybe in a day or two and see if you agree on at least some of these points. Executive, they are not seeing the value that we can produce.

Speaker 1: 14:51

I honestly believe project management is a must for every organization. Project management is indispensable for business success. Yet we often have to fight to convince people to talk to project management. So some of the discussion that goes around that, okay, we have failure, so, as a result, organization executive don't trust us. As a result, pmo is acceptable. It's good enough if they have a PMO, because many organizations might not even have a PMO right.

Speaker 1: 15:20

But why Think about this? Why not a PM division or department equal to HR, finance, it or other department? All of them work on project, yet project is considered to be a second or third or even fourth class citizen in the organizational ranking. We've got to be able to change that. So how do we change that? Well, obviously some some might say professional association might have a role on this. Well, great, I can agree with that. However, history has showed us professional association has become businesses with too many conflict of interest. They are run by consultants and vendors and basically focusing on selling instead of focusing on what's best for the profession and for the emerging professional product management. We don't see enough from the association. Now, obviously, we talk a lot about PMI, but it's not only PMI, and this is something that what triggers is actually.

Speaker 1: 16:21

You know, this episode is a discussion we're having online. Yes, in my view, outside of IT-related field, pmi probably have done more damage than good, and I know I probably make a lot of enemies for saying what I just said, but I'm okay saying that because it's reality. Today, we have people in construction they don't understand what Agile is or what Scrum is and think, oh, agile and Scrum work in construction. That basically, whenever you hear something like this, that person does not understand Agile or Scrum or project management. Now, all of a sudden, we've been using things for and I had maybe a separate episode talking about some of the myths of Agile, so let me not go there right now the role of professional association. They could have done a great job, but they haven't, unfortunately.

Speaker 1: 17:25

Recently, I wrote an article and I talked about our roof is leaking. Now, what did I mean by that? And I meant by it is that you know you live in a house, right, and that house you have. Your roof is leaking, but you know it's leaking beyond. You know a few drops, you know leaking is heavy and it's starting to damage our furniture and, obviously, electronics and everything else we have in the house, if not doing further damage to the roof. And I meant by that that in project management, as I discussed already, we have a lot of failure. So we have a problem, a significant problem, leading to the point where a lot of organizations are losing millions and billions of dollars on projects. And as a result of that, what are we doing as a professional community, association and individuals and thought leaders, and all of that? Right? So the damage is to the profession, the damage because of the leak of the roof.

Speaker 1: 18:24

Yet what are we concerned with? What are professional associations we concerned with? What are professional associations concerned with? Well, our neighbor, maybe a fence does need some touch-up paint. And maybe another neighbor, their grass is not as green. So it's not always, the grass is not always green on the other side, right? So we are concerned with those things. We're not saying those things are not important, right? So if I relate that to project management, what I mean here, professional associations are concerned with citizen developer. You know they're concerned with HR, with you know, with job posting, with leadership.

Speaker 1: 19:02

A lot of these topics are valuable topics, so I'm not trying to badmouth any of these. These are very good topics and we need to know about them. We need to know about, you know, leadership. We need to know about all of these things. However, the priority is, you know, while I'm worried about leadership, projects are failing. So here it's that maybe the issue is not the importance of the topic, it's more about the importance, the urgency and the relevance.

Speaker 1: 19:30

If I'm a project management association, my primary concern should be how do I help organization deliver projects successfully right through great content and great support, instead of trying to sell certifications. That doesn't work. I'll throw this idea there. This year, I think it's 40-year anniversary of the PMP. Have any of you seen any studies, independent studies, not surveys, or question or oh, you get the PMP, you get trace. You know all of the stuff is manipulated. Okay, have anybody have seen an independent study that shows the PMP or PRINCE2 or any other certification are successful?

Speaker 1: 20:16

I mentioned the PMP because it's 40 years anniversary, I think, this year. Okay, why is not? I mean, I'm selling right now a product, a real platform, most clients would not. The first thing they would question me. Obviously, I'm just going to market right now, so I don't have a history in the market. As a result of that, selling is very difficult, right? Because I don't have a proven record. So how come, when it comes to buying software, we need to see a proof, evidence of performance, but when we chase and invest money on certification as executive right, we don't demand the proof except surveys and some paid editorial.

Speaker 1: 21:00

And again, this is not the PMI issue. This is not a PMP, this is PRINCE2, pmp, pmi, ipma, all of those other certifications and or association out there. So, as an association, as a community association, individual, again, we are pending a lot of focus on arguing whether agile is a project management method or not, or what is the best method, or hybrid or digital. And again, I repeat, I am guilty of that. I participate in many of these discussions. Now one more thing I want to say here, and I know maybe I did not create enough enemies, so I should create more enemies. We often find it very easy to blame PMI, and I'm one of those people who are not very good friends, at least with some what's going on, although I have spent decades with PMI and I'm part of the PMI Leadership Institute years ago and I was very happily involved.

Speaker 1: 21:54

However, it's not only PMI, as I mentioned, I've been mentioning the other association as well and here I want to touch on the PMO community. You know, when I talk about some of the things I hear and probably many who will oppose what I've been saying in this episode the most many PMO consultants why, over the years, what I've seen whenever I talked about elevating. You know because when I talk about PMD, I'm not talking about killing the PMO. I'm actually talking about elevating the PMO from being a project management office to a fully functional organizational department or division. Now some people will tell me oh, pmo is already a PMD. If that's true, if that's literally true, in terms of organizational governance, board of director decision and everything else, a PMO is actually equal to an HR department, right? If that's true, then why do you keep calling it office? I'm one of those people.

Speaker 1: 22:55

Sometimes I believe in psychology of words. The word office by itself to me is demeaning. So when I'm trying to say, when I promote the idea of project management, divisions and department is, I'm trying to elevate the PMO, elevate the level of recognition of the function of project management in an organization to be equal at least for everybody else, if not even higher. So, from that perspective, when I talk about these things, who fight me the most and what is some in the PMO community? And let me try to touch on why the PMO community is almost as guilty as many of the professional associations out there.

Speaker 1: 23:43

One I've seen a lot of promotion of PMOs. It's almost like an independent domain from project management. Why Isn't a PMO part of project management? Why it should be something independent, and we have to make sure that the PMO is independent of the project manager and those project management function is something else we don't have to worry about. Another thing many of them have transported PMO communities into games and certification. Let's play the game who can beat and who will win, and obviously some of these right now are becoming mainstream. And I'm not saying there is a value, but the point I'm trying to raise here.

Speaker 1: 24:23

All I see from this association online is often the confirmation about their games and their certification. I don't see any thought leadership content being shared online, educational content that are shared free of charge, right what we see often. Or maybe we have to be a member or we have to follow them right, but you publish so much. Why is all? Your marketing is purely commercial nature instead of educational nature. I'm a tiny startup and yet I, often enough, publish a lot of content online that are educational and that has nothing to do with promoting my business. Actually, an episode like this probably hurt me more than it helped me.

Speaker 1: 25:10

My main purpose is elevating project management, and why? It's not because I am biased toward project management, because I know if we elevate project management, we can help organization increase their profit or service. If they are not for profit or to the community, are non-for-profit or to the community. So what else the PMO community have done? Unfortunately, I've seen it a lot.

Speaker 1: 25:46

Many PMO consultants have agreed to build and manage PMO for clients that are more like a police force rather than an added value function. So what they do they? You know the client will ask them to do things. They will do whatever the client says. Well, you know, because obviously we all learned that the client is always right, correct? No, I used to train my team when I was in Dubai is that the client is not always right. An educated client is always right.

Speaker 1: 26:10

So my job. First, the client is asking me for something that doesn't make sense, to correct that client and I can tell you I've lost contract as a result of that, but I don't care. My job is to make sure that I help the client understand if they're asking me for something that doesn't make sense or is not to their best interest, because they might not know that I am supposed to be the expert they're asking for. So I have no problem of sharing my knowledge and educating them and then let them decide. If they still decide on something, that is not great, that's up to them, but at least I've done my job. I have been clear, ethically on the right side. So, as a result, we established PMOs, some of them established PMOs, and we know they're going to die because they're not going to improve performance.

Speaker 1: 26:54

Another thing I want to just summarize what I said already is that we have accepted as a PMO community, that the term PMO or the idea of PMO or the concept is acceptable. In other words, we are accepting and we are promoting the acceptance that a project management function is somewhere to be substandard or below the other function of the organization. It's okay for the other organization to have department, but for us it's okay to have office. I know I'm repeating this, but what I'm trying to say here in this case is that we as a PMO community have accepted that. So, instead of fighting to elevate the PMO to become equal to other function, what do we do? We cry about? Why don't we have a seat at the table? Well, I can tell you, if we're going to continue to operate the way we are, we will never have a seat at the table, if not completely killed as a domain. We're already here.

Speaker 1: 27:55

One of the reasons that triggered these posts and this discussion is that recent discussion. These organizations don't use project management anymore. We do product. Now, when you start to ask them, what the hell does that mean? You find out they're doing project, but they don't want to call it project. We're going to call it product. It's getting to the point where project management is not only a bad word. If they can remove it from the dictionary, they can probably remove it from the dictionary.

Speaker 1: 28:21

I need a breather and I think it's time to end this. I've shared a lot of this frustration and my reason for this is not again to vent. Obviously, part of it is venting, but it's to share, to be a little bit provocative in the way. We need to think about our domain, to start to demand more action. If professional associations are not giving us the result, walk away, walk away, right. Why do we need to keep paying them money if they're not giving us true value? Now, I know for many people they're still getting great value A lot of membership, free, guide, all of this open. So I'm not saying for everybody, but for those who do not believe a professional association, whoever it is right, provide them value, walk away. Or, if you choose to stay, stay right.

Speaker 1: 29:21

But then think about what can we do as individuals, as small organizations, small startups like Rupi M. What can we do to the community? What can we do to help alleviate some of the concerns and issues and problems in order to improve success, lower operation costs, maximizing benefit to our clients and maximizing benefit to the communities? What can we do about it? I honestly urge you to think and whenever you see stuff online, take a critical look at them. What are they? What are they trying to tell us? What is their proven record? Okay, is that something makes sense?

Speaker 1: 29:55

When we hear agile project management method, do we understand what agile is? When we hear waterfall right when we hear about a digital or XMOs or whatever the case might be. We can't just follow or we can lead. Now somebody will tell you well, munir, you know, I don't have a big following, I don't have a leader, even if you have three people following you on LinkedIn, you have a follower, you can communicate, you can elevate performance.

Speaker 1: 30:30

However, the key is the key is the only thing that we can do to help organization executive trust us again is by performing, by doing the best job we can, and that include that include saying no if an executive is asking us to do something ridiculous or a project that doesn't make sense. We should be able to accept the idea that we are the expert in the project management domain and we should back up our experience and we should basically explain and share that maybe, for example, a bad deadline or too much of a tight budget is actually it's going to backfire sooner or later. So we have to take the ethical the higher out and being honest, being open and communicate. Now again, at the end of the day, management insists.

Speaker 1: 31:31

Obviously, you have the choice of walking away or accepting, but at least you would have ethically done the best you can in communicating concern, in communicating issues, and maybe maybe right if something you know goes bad and you can maybe not have to tell them. I told you so but at least some might recognize and the next time they would listen. So the moral here, or the maybe the summary of this we don't need to wait on association, we don't need to wait on everybody else. We have a job, we have an obligation to do something to protect our domain and our profession. And with this I say thank you. I wish you success today, tomorrow and always.