Bill's Notebook

Project management has been the latest management field to be hit by the 2.0 meme.  Essentially, PM 2.0 is about using social networking tools for managing projects which in itself is not bad.  Ninety percent of project management is communication and anything that helps project communication is welcomed.

No, the issue is the rush to abandon PM 1.0 in favor of PM 2.0.  Now the gurus and consultants who are leading this rush don’t really define what they mean (that sounds familiar) but they are united in their condemnation of the old project management.  This is an updating of the accidental project manager who buys a copy of Microsoft Project and thinks that is all there is to managing projects.  Now, instead of MS Project, the wiki is the magical project management tool.

Alleman at Herding Cats has been writing some great articles about the hype around PM 2.0.  Well worth the read and injection of reality in the debate.

I received a Google Wave invite.  I haven’t started working with it yet but I plan to work through the examples.  From what I have read, I’m more inclined to believe that Wave is more hype than useful.  But I want to have an open mind and so will give it a good workout.

I understand Twitter technically but I was never sold on what was so revolutionary about it.  Calling it microblogging when it was really just a pale reflection of blogging never really seemed to explain it.  I’ve used it for events but every since I put the Facebook app on my phone, I use that instead.

Apparently, others are questioning Twitter’s utility because its traffic has stalled for the last four months and is declining.

1)  Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful by Beth Simone Noveck.  Details how she helped create a Web 2.0 solution to where the public can help in patent reviews, Ms. Noveck gives some great tips on how to create a successful social networking site for government agencies.

2) If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government by William D. Eggers and John O’Leary.  Excellent book on how the federal government can better manage large-scale projects.  An especially-telling metaphor is the “Stargate” in which Eggers and O’Leary describe how bills designed to be passed in Congress often fail when they go through the Stargate into administration side of government and the civil servants have to figure out how to implement the new law without any guidance from those who created the law.

3) The Next Government of the United States: Why Our Institutions Fail Us and How to Fix Them by Donald F. Kettl.  Kettl, a noted scholar in public administration, describes why there needs to be a new approach to governing.  He calls for training public managers in “rocket science” which is his term for the skills that lead to the Coast Guard’s successful rescue efforts during Katrina.

Starting back in 2005, I began blogging on Blogger.com as Eclectic Bill.  Due to some issues with spamming, I took that blog down.  In 2006, I started a second blog at DesignOfKnowledge.com that focused on training and learning.  In February of 2009, I took a hiatus to concentrate on finishing my dissertation.

So, I was reading through some old blog posts and decided to create some pages that summarized some of the recurrent themes in my posts.  The first three that came to mind:

1) My continuing criticism of informal learning.

2) My continuing advocacy of evidence-based learning, teaching, and training.

3) The Theory of Constraints Wicked Problem Challenge.

It will be fun to reignite the debate.

I’m working up a proposal for the 2010 PMI Research Conference along with a colleague of mine.  The literature on the project manager as a leader is small and focused on the usual leadership models.  I’m proposing a different model that recognizes the management duties of the project manager and incorporating emotional intelligence research and neuroscience research.  The paper is going to be more of an outline for future research but I believe the framework is better suited to the unique qualities of project management.

And when you read the article by Dr. Richard Cook, you will hang them on your office wall too.  Four pages that encapsulate a great deal of wisdom.

So, I preordered a Nook because I like the fact that it is based on Android and has built-in WiFi.  Can’t wait to see the hacks for it.  Here’s one suggestion: the ability to access social networks based around individual books.  Maybe for Nook 2.0?

Back when the Internet was still an exclusive hobbyist network and Bill Clinton was running his first Presidential campaign, Walter Anderson was writing about how the technologies of that time allowed people to construct their own views of reality.  Back in the days of one cable news network, few people owned a cellphone, and 1200-baud modems, his ideas seemed fantastic to me but I could see it happening once the necessary technology infrastructure was in place.

Now we have the Internet and it is quite easy to construct your own reality.  It’s called group polarization and, according to Joshua-Michéle Ross, it is one of the paradoxes of the Internet age.  As the Internet offers us more opportunities to connect with more people, we tend to connect with people like us.  This leads to the hardening of opinions and a quicker propensity to group think.

This is why I worry about the dark side of social networking as informal learning gurus and collaboration vendors try to push their technological solutions.  I have yet to see a social networking technology that can counter groupthink or group polarization.

I recently read Matthew Stewart’s The Management Myth during my hiatus from blogging.  Mr. Stewart’s book is an expose of the myths that created the management consulting profession and his adventures at a typical management consulting firm.  He describes how Taylor’s experiments would not even make a good undergraduate research project and how the Hawthorne effect was never scientifically established.  Everyone from Peter Drucker to Tom Peters is shown to be more of a showman than a serious researcher in management science.   These sections are well-documented and were eye-opening for me.

In alternating chapters he describes his misadventures at a management consulting which was eerily similar to my times at various consulting firms.  His description of the type of analysis taught to neophyte consultants is quite illuminating for those who want to hire management consultants (especially the part about the “Whale”).

For a taste of what the book is like, you can read Mr. Stewart’s article in the Atlantic Monthly.