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+---
+tags:
+  - project-management
+---
+# Project Management™
+
+[[this-notebook]] assumes the reader is more familiar with the construction industry
+than with any of the other disciplines introduced.
+As such, "project management" usually refers to _construction_ project management,
+or more generally to a layman understanding of the term:
+roughly, "the processes necessary to complete a long-term goal".
+
+Where I am referring specifically to the discipline,
+as documented by the [Project Management Institute](htpps://pmi.org),
+I've opted to humorously style the term as Project Management™ for clarity.
+
+## The Problem with Project Management™
+
+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 construction,
+and there are as many or more critical construction project management problems
+that Project Management™ doctrine has no good solutions for.
+
+I would posit that, despite its cross-discipline language,
+Project Management™ practice is only _universally_ applicable
+to _software_ project management.
+
+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 actual installation requirements,
+due to [[gold-plating]] and owner furnished scope.