What is Project Management?

Outputs from Workshop 8, Lancaster University, 18th May 2011

Participants were asked for their ideas about relating project management to activities, animals, ideas. These are the suggestions (in no particular order):

Project Management is...

...like platting fog

...Europe. A lot of good ideas but no clear direction.

...PM is what you make it

...like cricket. There are rules, teams and it works best if everybody plays their part and plays fair. (Although French cricket is a bit different).

...like conducting an orchestra.

...like parenting.

...like washing the dishes - it isn't the same process with a dishwasher.

...like Spaghetti Junction (information flows in many directions with varied needs of stakeholders).

...like a bottle in which the glue of social capital can be spread.

...has the potentialto be the catalyst for partnership (public + private + 3rd sector) progress.

...like the stage on which social progress can be made.

...guiding to a sustainable outcome! (Community development contexts)

... a camel - a racehorce designed by a committee (cf BoKs!)

...like rapids in a river. (There is a notion of where it ends, but the 'middle'/rapids is difficult to 'conceptualise'/'organise').

...a watermill: significant power from subtle source; significant impact of process; significant scope for error; more mechanical than social; correct settings based on 'feel'.