Project Management Hits the Big Time

I've always been a fan of the Harvard Business Review, ever since my favorite teacher introduced me to it in a high school economics class approximately a century ago. As one of the best sources of research and writing about organizational life, they are often ahead of the curve. But when it comes to the primacy of project management as a critical skill set, they have been lagging behind. As a newbie in the project management field 25 years ago, it was obvious to me that many articles in HBR and other leading business magazines were talking about project management issues without ever saying the words "project management." They skirted around our discipline's key roles in strategy execution, product development, creative work ... well, everywhere, really. I used to think that project management would know it had arrived when HBR started running articles about it.

To be fair, the blindness/barrier that created a gulf between projects and "the business side" could also be traced to behaviors on the project side. I used to try to incorporate bits of news from major business publications into the news roundup section I edited for PM Network back in the day, only to be told "that doesn't have anything to do with project management." It took even PMI a while to begin to reach across that gulf, which they have recently done successfully with initiatives like Brightline.

Maybe that's why, yesterday, my featured resources email from HBR was all about -- ta da! -- Mastering Project Management. I'm pleased, even though they are a bit late to the party, and I feel like there are books and articles galore available by people who are recognized experts in the field. Even the term "mastering project management" is perhaps better left to ... project management masters.