Small Introduction
This is a subject previously posted half a year ago. I’ve decided to revisit the thing and expand into an essay. Well, here goes.
On Project Requirements
Some time ago, I self-enlisted into the Project Management Institute. Unlike the enlisted soldier filled with bravado, I joined the institute when I was filled with befuddlement. The industry has had a strange shroud over project management and I meant to lift it up a little and duck my head inside. Every project manager’s story on how they got to where they were began to sound the same. It was one of two stories; either they unconsciously progressed to project management, like a man standing on a moving walkway in an airport, without doing much and not changing even a little, or they were suddenly given project management responsibilities without preparation or instruction, like how a lonely man looking at one wolf suddenly finds himself surrounded by the rest, thrown into a fight-or-flight event.
I noticed these perennial patterns and desired to avoid them. Both, I found, were simple to avoid; although the preventative measures were hard to do. The first story, the dormant and inactive one, required willful and thoughtful action. The second story required me to be a watchman and even, it is awful to say, an alert watchman. For it is tiring to be alert at all times with a feeling to act in some sure way without knowing what action is needed and what threat is out there. An observer might have asked me why I was so bent on avoiding wolves and conveyor belts and that I ought to relax and take my career as it comes. You know, hakuna matada, and all that. But what an awful question to ask, for who desires to be torn apart or to be as dull as driftwood?
Any ancient job, like gardening or ironworking, has a better grasp on taking action and preventive measures than any modern knowledge working job. There are countless books and even more green-thumbed gardeners who know the times and weather for when certain things must be prepared beforehand. There are hardly any books or project managers who know anything about preparing or planning. This, as I return to the beginning, is why I joined the institute.
I took a certification course called Certified Associate Project Manager which was supposed to act as a formal, structured education for aspiring project managers and for folks, like me, with irrational fears of wolves and driftwood. I instead found spaghetti sentences and abstract apparitions. Chesterton once said that it is a good exercise to speak your ideas in one-syllable words and not be so lazy with words that require no thinking of the speaker. The institute is invited to do so since much of what that said, and it was much, said very little. But I did find great words, which, in turn, informed me more about project management than half a decade of passive experience.
One of the golden words was the word requirement. A project has a group of requirements that must be met in order for it to be done. A project manager, and really anyone else involved in the project, ought to know the requirements at the beginning and ought to make sure they are met. Any new requirements ought to be shared with the group. Someone, usually the project manager, ought to be able to accept or reject new requirement requests. When a new requirement is added, usually the schedule or budget of the project will need to be increased. To keep one’s eye on the requirements will help keep the project from flying off like a balloon.
This word startled and excited me. It and several other golden words relieved me from confusion. I often wondered why things went wrong in projects and never could find the words. Here was one word I already knew but never used until now. To seek out project requirements at the beginning was something that was hardly ever done. To reject new requirements or to adjust the schedule or budget were things too rare to be called regular. It was this word that lifted the mist and let me see things more clearly. It was this education that informed me on how to be watchful and what to do when I see a wolf. I was still alert but no longer puzzled. I could start to recognize outlines and shapes through the low light of the watchtower. Wolves and converter belts are still my bane but I now know what counters them.
