---
title: Project Management™
tags:
  - status/draft
  - topic/ergonomics/organizational
  - type/philosophy
---
# Project Management™

%%

## TALK

%%

This note is distinguished from [[project-management]]
by referring specifically to doctrine/curriculum,
especially as documented by [The Project Management Institute](htpps://pmi.org).
I've opted to humorously style this concept as Project Management™ for clarity.
That is, "Project management" could never be wrong or even misguided,
but Project Management™ can (and often is).

This note may include generic criticism,
but discussion of the applicability (or lack thereof)
of Project Management™ to construction specifically

## Criticism

The term "Project Management" is deliberately vague,
in the hope that generalizing the terminology
maximizes its applicability across industries.

There are many core Project Management™ ideas
that have no parallel in other industries,
and industries often have problems of project management
that Project Management™ doctrine has no good solutions for.
See [[project-management-tm-for-construction]] for examples.

I would posit that, despite its cross-discipline language,
Project Management™ practice is only _universally_ applicable
to _software_ project management.

> [!aside]
> [[the-failure-of-risk-management]] humorously points out
> that PMI may not be in touch with _any_ part of its audience
> if they are able to release a publication "3 years overdue"
> without embarrassment. (p. 103)

That's not to say that it should be overlooked in construction applications.
There's no better source for solutions to problems that our industries share.
Specialized practices like [[lean-construction]] are decades behind PMI.
However, consulting Project Management™ for relevant insight
requires acknowledging its biases.

## Key Differences from Construction

### Labor Management

Project Management™ assumes workforce deficits are difficult to fill,
and that significant changes are sign of process failure.

* Qualified employees are hard to find
* Project onboarding is extensive
* Diminishing returns start early and are severe

In construction projects, labor is highly dynamic.
Workforce necessarily varies greatly through the project's lifespan,
and labor reallocation is a regular (weekly) task.

* Qualified employees are relatively plentiful, cost is the bottleneck
* Onboarding is practically nonexistent,
  new employees are productive on their first day
* Diminishing returns start late and are less pronounced

### Basis of Progress

If you assume that labor is a strong predictor of cost,
and that your audience can convert between them implicitly,
then hours convey both schedule _and_ cost by their nature.

Project Management™ is primarily concerned with _schedule_,
because it assumes that labor is a strong predictor of cost.

* Labor is the greatest (if not only) project cost.
* Labor (and therefore cost) is effectively fixed for a given scope.

As such, Project Managers™ may discuss project cost in hours,
with no loss of detail.

In construction projects, labor is known to be a weak predictor of cost.

* Labor is almost always a minority of project cost.
* Functionally equal options have a large spread
  of possible hours-to-complete and total cost values.

As such, construction project managers must discuss project cost directly.

I believe this difference is one purely of language,
and doesn't represent a difference in philosophy.
However, it does speak to Project Management™'s tendency to overgeneralize.

### Material

The use of labor as a measure of cost is not a difference of philosophy itself,
however Project Management™ is only able to get away with conflating labor and cost
because it assumes Material cost is negligible,
or that it can be allocated as overhead.

What I'm calling Material cost
refers to direct costs not associated with labor.
These costs vary wildly,
even independent of installation requirements,
due to [[gold-plating]] and owner furnished scope.
