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Harvey A. Levine has practiced project management since 1962 and established
his consulting firm, The Project Knowledge Group, in 1986. Levine is a leading
consultant in the project management software industry. He is a Fellow and past
president and chairman of the Project Management Institute.
E-mail: halevine@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~halevine/
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Introduction
Project Management is one of the fastest growing, widely recognized trends
of the last decade. It's recent popularity can be seen in many quarters. Over
50% annual growth in membership in the US Project Management Institute is just
one sign of this popular movement. Similar growth can be seen in project management
certification candidates, formal project management educational programs, project
management web sites and project management articles. As a forty year consultant/practitioner
of project management, the growth in opportunities for project management trainers
and consultants has certainly been appreciated by this writer. But it has been
accompanied by increasing frustration about the way that project management is
being implemented in those organizations that have recently come to embrace this
discipline.
Below are a few simple questions. Answer them truthfully. Then think about
the answers.
- Is your company running without a CEO?
- Who do your engineers report to?
- Do you have an accounting or finance function?
- Who do they report to?
Even in this day of flat organizations and multidiscipline teams, almost all
of you will have replied that your organization does have a CEO, that engineers
report to an Engineering Manager, and that there is a Chief Financial Officer
(or similar title) heading up the finance function and watching out for the firm's
financial health and objectives.
Is this bucking the trend? Or does it still make irrefutable sense to maintain
hierarchical structures within our organizations? Without defined leaders in
these important functions, who will define the department's mission? Who will
set the standards? Where will the leadership and mentoring come from?
You won't find many organizations without structured functions for Information
Systems, Human Resources, Marketing and Sales, Procurement, etc., (where applicable).
Yet there is one vastly important function, in many organizations, that has been
declared exempt from this rule. That is the project management function.
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