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SECTION 13

MAKING PROJECT
MANAGEMENT WORK

Project Management is an ART. Project Management is a SCIENCE. Project
Management is a PROCESS. Yes, it is all of these. But, most of all, Project
Management is a lot of COMMON SENSE.

Without organizing for project management, and without establishing a set of
project management practices and developing a project management culture,
project management is likely to fail. Yet all of these are not enough to assure that
any project management initiative will be successful. This is because project man-
agement cannot be solely an academic subject. Rather, it must be the practical
application of the accumulated theory, knowledge, and experience—about orga-
nizations, people, operations, and projects.

There is a lot of structure to the art and science of project management. But
these are guides to how you might practice the project management craft. It is
good to learn all aspects of the craft and to know how to use the tools. But, like a
good craftsman, it is just as important to know when and where to use each tool.

So how do we make project management work? Primarily, it takes a commit-
ment and an effort to establish a culture that is supportive of project manage-
ment. This includes a certain level of training, for everyone who will be involved
with or affected by the project management process. Our recommendations for
training are presented in Chapter 13.1.

At the core of a successful project management implementation is communi-
cation. At the core of most failed projects is a lack of communication. What do we
communicate? With whom do we communicate? How do we make the communi-
cations most effective? This is what we discuss in Chapter 13.2.

Another cause of failures in implementing project management can be traced
back to this simple misconception: that we can take shortcuts with project man-
agement—that we can treat it casually and unprofessionally—and still have it

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