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The Secret of Project Control, Known Only by a Few
I think it is clear that project managers are expected to control their projects so that they meet their budget, schedule, scope, and performance targets. When you really consider it, that is a tall order, because what it really means is that you are supposed to control the performance of people so that they collectively achieve these targets. It is akin to the responsibility of a CEO or President of an organization, and Stafford Beer wrote a couple of books* in which he argued that this is only possible if you manage the law of requisite variety.
This law pertains to systems, and was expounded by Ross Ashby. It says that, in any system of humans or machines, the element in the system having the greatest flexibility in its behavior will control the system.
Now if you consider a project team to be a system of humans, this law is saying that the project manager can be in control only if s/he has greater behavioral flexibility than any other element in the system. The difficulty of doing this has been expressed in the description of project management as herding cats. As we all know, cats don't herd like cattle, so the implication is that project teams are very difficult to take to a desired destination, and this is indeed true.
It seems that many, if not most, managers recognize the difficulty, and they try to reduce the variability in the behavior of the project team with prohibitions, called policies at the organizational level. I call them the "thou-shalt-not" rules for project team members. And as Tom Peters argued in Thriving on Chaos, they simply do not gain compliance of organization members.
The proper way to reduce the variability of the project team turns out to be a part of the very procedures we should use when we plan and manage a project. You will remember that control is defined as follows:
Control is exercised by comparing where you are to where you are supposed to be, so that correc
I think it is clear that project managers are expected to control their projects so that they meet their budget, schedule, scope, and performance targets. When you really consider it, that is a tall order, because what it really means is that you are supposed to control the performance of people so that they collectively achieve these targets. It is akin to the responsibility of a CEO or President of an organization, and Stafford Beer wrote a couple of books* in which he argued that this is only possible if you manage the law of requisite variety.
This law pertains to systems, and was expounded by Ross Ashby. It says that, in any system of humans or machines, the element in the system having the greatest flexibility in its behavior will control the system.
Now if you consider a project team to be a system of humans, this law is saying that the project manager can be in control only if s/he has greater behavioral flexibility than any other element in the system. The difficulty of doing this has been expressed in the description of project management as herding cats. As we all know, cats don't herd like cattle, so the implication is that project teams are very difficult to take to a desired destination, and this is indeed true.
It seems that many, if not most, managers recognize the difficulty, and they try to reduce the variability in the behavior of the project team with prohibitions, called policies at the organizational level. I call them the "thou-shalt-not" rules for project team members. And as Tom Peters argued in Thriving on Chaos, they simply do not gain compliance of organization members.
The proper way to reduce the variability of the project team turns out to be a part of the very procedures we should use when we plan and manage a project. You will remember that control is defined as follows:
Control is exercised by comparing where you are to where you are supposed to be, so that correc