Some Quibbles, and then ... the Big Question

September 2, 2020 | by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

In our series of blogs addressing questions left unanswered at the end of our webinar (the recorded version is available here) on The State of Project Management 2020, I've left the biggest--and smallest--questions for last.

In each webinar or in-person session (remember those? PMI conferences? Bad lighting, icky coffee? Don't you miss it?), there are always a number of what I call "methodology quibbles" to be resolved. They might be nit-picky, but they are important because they impact the audience member's ability or willingness to consume the data I am offering. We had a number of those from webinar attendees. I'll run through them quickly and then get to the Big Question.

Q: What is a "Company"?

• We don’t’ use that word in the study, although we may have used it a few times in the webinar when talking about case studies, or clients. We use organization, because, as I point out in my initial slide on the demographics, a significant portion of respondents are in the nonprofit and public sectors.

Q: Do these "companies" include owners, like Chevron, or are they predominantly engineering/construction companies, e.g. Bechtel, Fluor,...? 

•  Once again, this is discussed on my first slide, where you can see what industries participants are from. As to company size, that is also delineated in the report, although we didn’t discuss it in the webinar. The short answer is, organizations in the study run the gamut, in industry sector as well as size. It is a representative cross-section of enterprises where project management is used.

Q: Is "Agile PM" a takeoff on Lean Construction or something else? 

• Check out the PMBOK® Guide, Sixth Edition. Appendix X3 has a complete set of definitions of agile, adaptive, iterative, and so on. Also, check out our previous research study on The Adaptive Organization. for in depth information about how organizations are using agile and adaptive methods on projects.

Q: What I don't see in determining high performers is utilizing an independent auditing organization like IPA.

• No ... IPA is an accounting organization. I’m not sure how their involvement would help determine project management – or even business management—performance, outside the very narrow range of financial indicators. In any research study, the research entity sets up a methodology designed to answer the questions posed by the study. I explained in detail how we determine high performers in the study (there's a list of ten organizational performance measures, ranked on a Likert scale of 1-5, only one of which is financial performance. See the recorded webinar for a refresher). High performers are so named within the context of the study. We're not claiming they are the best in the world. (Although, a few years ago when I looked up our high performers from one study, I found that a significant number of them had won nationwide or global awards, or experienced phenomenal shareholder value growth. That's perhaps more than a coincidence, in my view.)

Pondering Some Big Questions. Now for the heart of the matter. These folks asked important questions that are on target, and for which I confess I do not have conclusive answers. Nevertheless, these questions are worth thinking about:

Q: Have you been able to establish that high-performing project managers CAUSE higher performance in companies, or is it a  CORRELATION that high-performing organizations also perform well at PM (and probably other disciplines as well)?

• The resounding THWACK you just heard was this questioner hitting the nail on the head. This is an excellent question, and one I have spent a lot of time working on myself. With any research finding, especially in survey research of this type, where you don't have the ability to set up trials or have a control group, or any of the other luxuries of academic research, the determination of cause and effect is very difficult. Our research shows definite correlations between certain project management skills, behaviors, functions and practices, and the overall performance of the organization. (By the way, what is "high performing" in the parlance of our study is the organization, not the project manager. But we looked at that in a different study.) High-performing organizations in these studies report better results on all ten of the organizational performance measures, from employee satisfaction to budget and schedule performance. Did great project management put them over the top? or, because they are great, does project management face fewer hurdles? This question isn't answerable with the tools we have at hand ... and I'm not sure it matters. We encourage our clients and followers to emulate the project management practices of high-performing companies. It can't hurt. And I reserve the thorny methodological questions for myself ... if you are interested,. though, here's a great discussion of the cause and effect vs. correlation dilemma.

Finally, a question that leads us into a new area of research:

Q: Have you tested the hypothesis of whether transforming organizations towards agility are in the low performers segment?

• Glad you asked. In every study, we solicit participants who might be willing to be interviewed for followup, qualitative research covering new questions that arise from the study findings. This question provides a perfect example of the type of thing we are looking at. Is there an organizational cost to the agile transformation? Stay tuned.

About the Author

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin is editor-in-chief for PM Solutions Research, and the author, co-author and editor of over twenty books on project management, including the 2007 PMI Literature Award winner, The AMA Handbook of Project Management, Second Edition.

View Posts by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

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