117 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
117 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Project Management™
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tags:
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- status/draft
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- topic/ergonomics/organizational
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- type/philosophy
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---
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# Project Management™
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## TALK
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This note is distinguished from [[project-management]]
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by referring specifically to doctrine/curriculum,
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especially as documented by [The Project Management Institute](htpps://pmi.org).
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I've opted to humorously style this concept as Project Management™ for clarity.
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That is, "Project management" could never be wrong or even misguided,
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but Project Management™ can (and often is).
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This note may include generic criticism,
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but discussion of the applicability (or lack thereof)
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of Project Management™ to construction specifically
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## Criticism
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The term "Project Management" is deliberately vague,
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in the hope that generalizing the terminology
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maximizes its applicability across industries.
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There are many core Project Management™ ideas
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that have no parallel in other industries,
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and industries often have problems of project management
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that Project Management™ doctrine has no good solutions for.
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See [[project-management-tm-for-construction]] for examples.
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I would posit that, despite its cross-discipline language,
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Project Management™ practice is only _universally_ applicable
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to _software_ project management.
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> [!aside]
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> _[[hubbard_2020_failure|The Failure of Risk Management]]_
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> humorously points out
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> that PMI may not be in touch with _any_ part of its audience
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> if they are able to release a publication "3 years overdue"
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> without embarrassment.[^1]
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[^1]: p. 103
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That's not to say that it should be overlooked in construction applications.
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There's no better source for solutions to problems that our industries share.
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Specialized practices like [[lean-construction]] are decades behind PMI.
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However, consulting Project Management™ for relevant insight
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requires acknowledging its biases.
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## Key Differences from Construction
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### Labor Management
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Project Management™ assumes workforce deficits are difficult to fill,
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and that significant changes are sign of process failure.
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* Qualified employees are hard to find
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* Project onboarding is extensive
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* Diminishing returns start early and are severe
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In construction projects, labor is highly dynamic.
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Workforce necessarily varies greatly through the project's lifespan,
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and labor reallocation is a regular (weekly) task.
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* Qualified employees are relatively plentiful, cost is the bottleneck
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* Onboarding is practically nonexistent,
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new employees are productive on their first day
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* Diminishing returns start late and are less pronounced
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### Basis of Progress
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If you assume that labor is a strong predictor of cost,
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and that your audience can convert between them implicitly,
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then hours convey both schedule _and_ cost by their nature.
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Project Management™ is primarily concerned with _schedule_,
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because it assumes that labor is a strong predictor of cost.
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* Labor is the greatest (if not only) project cost.
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* Labor (and therefore cost) is effectively fixed for a given scope.
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As such, Project Managers™ may discuss project cost in hours,
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with no loss of detail.
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In construction projects, labor is known to be a weak predictor of cost.
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* Labor is almost always a minority of project cost.
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* Functionally equal options have a large spread
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of possible hours-to-complete and total cost values.
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As such, construction project managers must discuss project cost directly.
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I believe this difference is one purely of language,
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and doesn't represent a difference in philosophy.
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However, it does speak to Project Management™'s tendency to overgeneralize.
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### Material
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The use of labor as a measure of cost is not a difference of philosophy itself,
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however Project Management™ is only able to get away with conflating labor and cost
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because it assumes Material cost is negligible,
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or that it can be allocated as overhead.
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What I'm calling Material cost
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refers to direct costs not associated with labor.
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These costs vary wildly,
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even independent of installation requirements,
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due to [[gold-plating]] and owner furnished scope.
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