Lesson 8: Current (and Future) Issues in Project Management

Non-I.T. Project Management

In my view, the fact that project management is sometimes equated with either engineering or I.T. work is one of those good/bad things in life.

It's good because those engineering and I.T. people really like efficency, and so have crafted the science of project management very rationally and pragmatically.

It's bad because there are probably a lot of people out there -- good people -- who won't venture into the project management world because they figure it's all about engineering and I.T.

This bad part is ultra-unfortunate, because project management is full of people who, like me, could not program software if the lives of an entire species depended upon it. The extent of my programming proficency ended with my Vic 20 back in 1983, when I got bored of the only program that I knew at the time, which went a little something like this:

10 print "hello jason"
20 goto 10
run

This, of course, led to:

hello jason
hello jason
hello jason
hello jason
hello jason
hello jason
hello jason
...

I never had a chance, did I?

Well, this demented trip down memory lane is meant to prove to you that not everyone who is involved in project management is associated with engineering or I.T.

As we discovered in this course, especially in our simple 10-step project methodology, project management approaches and principles can apply to anything that meets the definition of a project. Got a wedding to plan? Project manage the monster. What about a family trip? (although I suspect you'll take some of the fun out of things if you have a quality management plan, but hey, who am I to judge what's fun?). Or maybe you are developing a training program at work, or a conference. Project manage the thing to shreds.

There are a stunning array of worthy activities that would benefit from some project management. Won't you give one of these activities a home?

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