2009 APM East of England Chapter

‘But in the real world …’ David MacLeod, CITI Principal Consultant, presented at the APM East of England chapter on best practice project planning and how it can work in a deadline driven business world.

The APM has made great strides in recent years in professionalising project management across all sectors. The APM BoK represents ‘best practice’ thinking in 52 different knowledge areas. If we all followed its advice and employed the techniques, our projects would run … perfectly!

However, it may be ‘best practice’, but in ‘common practice’, business project managers run into significant difficulties, particularly when it comes to managing projects to tight (infeasible) deadlines and trimmed (impossible) budgets. On my project management education courses, delegates will agree that the planning techniques they learn are ‘really good, sensible stuff’ but their questions are always prefaced by, ‘But, in the real world …’ as they then go on to bemoan the lack of appreciation among senior managers and sponsors of the challenges of managing a project.

Why do business sponsors and senior managers feel that it is necessary to place infeasible constraints on project managers? Has a regular flow of project failure stories so worried senior executives that they feel obliged to set ‘stretch’ targets for projects and revert to an ‘all stick’ and ‘no carrot’ approach?

David’s talk looked at how project managers can, and must, continue to do the job properly and still remain in employment.