Ah! Project Management! “17 trillion dollars have been spent in business projects in 2003, in US alone“, says, Kenneth Hartley of PMI. Out of all projects an average of 61% fail to meet quality, cost or schedule objectives, says the Prince2 website. One survey says 82% of all projects used to fail in 1996, while the figure is getting better at 60% in 2002.

Sometimes I wonder, how can we fail so often on something we spend so much money? How come super projects like the Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal, Egyptian Pyramids have been fairly successul, while many thousands of years later, we fail in executing simple IT projects. I come to know the Taj Mahal was built over 22 years with about 20,000 people at the cost of 32 million Indian rupees in 1648. (Tens of trillion dollars in present terms)

Even assuming the project might have fallen short of its quality, schedule or cost objectives, for a moment I wonder about the human resource management techniques they might have used to manage and motivate people to build this monument. It seems, as soon as construction work began in early 1630, sculptors, masons, craftsmen, and calligraphers were called from all over India, Persia, Ottoman Empire and Europe to work on construction of the Taj.

Now imagine the knowledge management techniques they might have used when the average worker's longevity was 29 years. Well, I am impressed! But the pressing question is why haven't we built on such skills and evolved into instinctive super project managers? Surely, we have come a long way since 1648 in every other human enterprise and knowledge.  Why is it then we are unable to use the skills we had so long ago?

The one thing that is remarkably different from these mega-projects and now is, “constant change in requirements”.  Shah Jahan didn't lose his love for Mumtaj for 22 years and Chinese kings were concerned about security for a very long time. However today, my stakeholders change their requirements faster than I can build my WBS. It is not their fault, they do it because their stake holders change their requirements on them.

We have to accept that change and projects go together. Strategies change, objectives change, policies change, all causing frequent changes in project requirements and a project should overcome all these changes to be successful. In this environment, the world rewards agile and flexible project managers who can thrive in chaos but stay calm and remain focussed with a working PM methodology.

In these pages, I plan to highlight my favorite projects and I hope you enjoy your visit!