PMcrunch

"Managing an IT project is like juggling chunks of Jell-O: It’s neither easy nor pretty."  So it says in an excellent article on IT Project Management is CIO magazine.  The article goes on to say, very accurately I think, that "Information technology is especially slippery because it’s always moving, changing, adapting and challenging business as we know it."

I have worked in both construction and manufacturing, before making a switch to the IT field.  The real difference with IT project management is the absense of solid, reliable, and tangible history regarding the processes and procedures that make up a project.  For example, when estimating a construction project, it is well known how long it should take a drywall contractor to put up wallboard.  In manufacturing, where production processes are stable and usually changed incrementally, it is well know, for example, how long it might take to rebuild a kiln.

By contrast, IT project management does not have such long established metrics, and it is impossible to get them because the technologies and requirements change so quickly as to not allow the establishment of reliable metrics.  Furthermore, there is a tug-of-war between business drivers and technology drivers.  Common wisdom might say that the business should dictate the requirements.  While in the end that ultimately is true, the reality is that technology often influences requirements by making something possible that was not possible before, thus, in essence, driving or at least strongly influencing business requirements.

The key to it all is to take a strategic approach, and to do as much work UP FRONT as possible.  Part of that up front work must recognize that there is a certain amount of expreimentation and free thinking that will be involved, but IT project planning enables us to compatmentalize those more exprimental activities, much in the way that agile/scrum works, so that we are still managing the overall direction.
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John Reiling, PMP
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