In discussing the current state of projects in a large enterprise with an ex-colleague, he shared a shocking revelation with me.

He sounded incredulous: Did you know that there are TWO project managers for every project? One a business and the other an IT project manager!?!

This obviously shows that my friend has had a somewhat sheltered existence, somewhat removed from the realities of today's large projects. The shelter was provided by a vendor of project management tools no less, where he worked as a tool evangelist. So another example it seems, of preaching the good word but not being fully aware of what is happening in the trenches!

I could not resist and replied in an equally surprised tone: That’s amazing! You ONLY have two project managers? 

The fact is there are so many different management roles in a project today it is hard to get excited about those with a project manager title. What about a Program Manager ....  and all those Development Managers? Isn’t there a Release Manager around somewhere too? Perhaps there are a couple of Change Managers on the project? What about a Business Implementation Manager? .... the list can go on. You have to wonder - what do all these folk do?

The fact is that the more people there are on a project, the more interactions there are (the old n! problem) and the more meetings and the more reporting .... etc. etc. Maybe one should not complain. All that employment is good for the economy.

Comment (0)

What do you call all those things that change the enterprise? The collective noun for projects?

The simple answer is a portfolio - a portfolio of projects. Sounds about right, and most people (I think) would agree .... But there are still some terminology problems .

Should we have used the term program instead of project? What about the smaller granularity items that are the maintenance or production support changes? Shouldn't they be included in the portfolio?

These may seem somewhat picky formalities but it does indicate that there is no consensus on such terms. Even as PM-BOK tries to cover the project space and ITIL the operational change space, a holistic perspective of what constitutes change to the enterprise is lacking. Certainly from the business viewpoint, organizational change/transformation still has to be considered.

I have been struggling with these terminology questions as I attempt to write a specification for a reporting tool being prototyped as part of my research. But given my inability to find some consistent terminology I have decided that a key feature will need to be the ability to have a user-defined "skin". That way an organization to pick the language that it finds most appropriate ...  but it surely its not that difficult to have some standard language in this area?

Comment (0)