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If you enter the Island of Projectistan for the first time, what would you encounter? Projectistan is the habitat of Project Managers. It is the Land Of Projects. It is coined by Jon Whitty from University of Southern Queensland.
I think we need a map.
As I see it we have the United Agilists, the Land of Lean, PMBoktoe and the Princedom Two. Oh. And we have the smallest province, fighting for its own existence, Shrinkonia, party of one, home of the Project Shrink.
If you enter the island Projectistan in the United Agilist, and see all the party hats, you’ll think that that’s the only way how projects are done.
If you have a map, you would know that there are other places too. But without any map, you wouldn’t know that for example PMBoktoe exists. And they wear construction hard hats. Totally different than party hats.
If you would have a history overview you would know that the United Agilists are only 20 years old. And Shrinkonia is only a couple of months young. A baby actually.
Of course, this map has a very Shrinkonian world view. The smallest state is drawn in the center. But it is young and has ambition. And one inhabitant already.
The borders are not as fixed as indicated on the map. In some parts territories are attempting to maintain rigid borders. Without a party hat, you don’t do projects. Or. Stupid party hats! But mainly we are integrating nicely. A multi-approach island, with diversity.
Nice.
Hello Bas ,
What an amazing depiction of all the famous disciplines of Project Management on a map.As a professional in the PM domain , I believe all these PM states could be united having an open border to each one of them and as of need in accordance with the situation , there could be a bunch of project management methodologies (picking the best of all by making every individual chunk from every state to make one best modal). I liked your Idea and thought to make a unification whenever required and suits to work as a unit having good collaboration that eventually helps projects endeavour to be successful meeting the constraints.
Hi Aamer, thanks for your kind comment. Yes I totally agree with you that a lot of ideas and concepts could be merged depending on the context in which you are performing the project. I hope a metaphor like this facilitates discussion.
I am a man without a country. I grew up in Chaos( unshown on the map, but dwarfing all of them) ,became a citizen of PMBOKToe in middle age, & have wandered through the rest of them ever since.
Hahaha.
You can join the first mobile state of Shrinkonia. Party of one. Where ever we lay our hat is our home. That’s how mobile we are. I think we need an anthem.
I think there’s a much larger group who realize methodologies are simply tools and the right person will use the right tool for the right job.
I would like to suggest the “right person” approach. Put the right person in charge of a project. Scope it for time and size so that they have the ability, connections and savvy to take personal responsibility for making a project succeed. They will have to pull in other people, they will have to work with other teams and they are well known, motivated and command enough respect in the organization to make a project succeed.
If the project succeeds, they succeed and receive the benefits that accrue with that success. If they fail, they taste the bitterness that comes along with failure and if they are intelligent, they learn enough to do better next time.
If the right person is in-charge, the methodology is meaningless. If the right person is not in-charge, the methodology is meaningless.
I don’t want to say that methodologies are meaningless, it’s more that the right person knows what situation requires a certain approach.
Think of it this way, would you hire a carpenter who insisted that a claw hammer was the correct tool for every instance? Of course not. There are times ball pein hammers are correct, there are times framming hammers are correct and there are times sledge hammers are correct.
In the same way, if a project manager insisted that some methodology was correct for every instance, I would immediately know that he was not the right person. And I realize it might require a club hammer to beat this simple insight into his thick skull.
Hey Andy,
I get what you mean. And I agree. Perhaps I need to tune the metaphor a bit.
Perhaps I need to include a large chunk of land with “Freestylers” using this “right person” approach.
Or perhaps the island is just one big happy island and it’s just the politicians trying to sell us these maps?
Or something like that. I think that there are several maps to be made 
I am convinced though that a certain organizational/context specific culture will favor one set of rules over the other. And that we will use labels like agile and plan-driven not only for some specific methods but for a whole range of associated mindsets … if that makes some sens.
Thanks for the inspiring comment.
Why didn’t I think of drawing a map? What a fantastic idea!
To advance the idea of the map of Projectistan (meaning the land of the project) a little more it might be worth noting the following features.
• Projectistan (-istan meaning land or place of) is a Projectocracy (-ocracy indicates a type of rule). It is a cultural society governed by its awareness of projects and project management, and in which advantages are bestowed on an aspiring class of people or business entities. For example, the individual project managers that have various PMBOK or PMBOK derived credentials such as PMP or RegPM, and the organisations that profess project management through their PM maturity rating.
• Projectistan was originally one cultural environment, very much PMBoK dominated.
• Over time internal struggles against PMBoK have formed splinter states (Agile and so on) and provinces (such as Prince2 which still have allegiances to PMBoK).
• It is a particular self-sustaining cultural environment where the idea and concept of projects and project management thrive as there is social machinery in place which supports them.
• Each state and province use energy (money, resource, social machinery like institutions etc) to fiercely defend and protect their hard won territory. They also use energy trying to take new territory (e.g. enterprise project management in law firms for example).
• Duel citizenship is often not really tolerated. If you came originally from Agile and now reside in PRINCE2, I bet you’ve learnt to keep your mouth shut about the ways of the old country. If not, you won’t last long.
• Projectistan not only rewards productivity, but also the appearance of productivity, and this means that advantages can be given to those that are good at bullshit and claiming lucky situations as foresight.
• One can recognize the various cultural environments (states and provinces) of Projectistan by their peculiar artefacts, events, rituals, practices, and language.
• Those project managers that could be deemed to be successful over time are those who have survived the cultural selection processes within Projectistan. And this point is a super big topic on its own.
I’m sorry to say that I can’t see the borders uniting. Each state and province is governed by a power entity such as a professional institute or other such accrediting body. To tear down a border would mean to relinquish power, and what power entity would do that? These power entities control the knowledge in their area and define what is important to know. They control the bodies of knowledge (what goes in and what doesn’t) and they control the mechanism (examinations etc) that promote people (or organisations) up the institutional ladders (or maturity ladders if your and organisation).
This situation sparked my thinking about finding a way to give the project management body of knowledge to the practitioners and scholars to evolve. My idea is to create an Open-Source Project Management Body of Knowledge. My paper on the topic is here: http://bit.ly/jl93pi If there’s any software gurus out there that fancy a crack at creating this – then I have some ideas on how this could be done.
I always draw maps, of everything
Thanks for this compelling comment. I’ll respond tomorrow… have to let it sink in a while 
I am thinking about a clever remark for days now
Thanks for the great reference. You gave a lot of food for thought 
As usual.
One point though, I do see a lot of practitioners embrace multiple approaches once they learn more about the others. I think one of the key aspects is being exposed to other approaches, seeing it on the map, visit the country at least once etc.
All the additions you just made, could also be clarified in some “historical timeline”
I shall return to this topic!
Bas, I suppose it’s important to reaffirm that Projectistan (as I see it) is a very real cultural environment. It doesn’t really speak of individuals, although it contains them. To invoke your terms in an example; if tomorrow you start work on a project that is delivered by the state government here in Australia, you would be entering an environment like Princedom Two. You might be a project manager with a wide experience in all the various methodologies, but all those around you speak Prince2. They know about the other methodologies (perhaps not so much as you) but they are only able to practice Prince2 because that is how their environment has been built and operates. You might think that a different approach is required, perhaps more agile methods, and you run small classes to teach your team. But this won’t get you very far. The information environment has been built for Prince2, and you’re not able to change that! Soon you’ll be seen as ‘unprofessional’ and the system will push against you, and you will finally conform (or leave). Of course I’m speaking generally here, and there will always be the odd instance where the rebel against the system will get a small win. But the evolution of cultures and ideas is a numbers game, and more often than not, small rebellious changes will be swamped out by the established doctrine.
Hey Jon,
Thanks for reminding me, and for the clarification. Yes, if the social structure doesn’t support the culture, it will not hold. And cultural change, lasting and on a larger scale, takes a long time, in general. (It took Agile 20 years to get onto the map in the first place
)
That’s why I am looking what one can do to get a temporary culture for your project. It’s not about changing the culture, but letting people connect more conscious to the one of the overarching structure and emphasize or downplay the elements in such a way they feel their most comfortable. Or reframing. Adjusting the angle of the camera that is recording reality
In any case, it is not intended to last.
But still… In my mind there goes somewhere “but! but!….” Perhaps it is the conviction that we should have easily the diversity. Let me listen to my mind for a moment
Bas,
I agree with your comment on organizational context. While there are many problems with waterfall project plans, they fit beautifully into corporate budgeting and accounting. Your CFO and finance guys understand it perfectly.
Try to explain agile to a CFO. Depending upon how polite the CFO is, they will either stop listening after 10 minutes or they will throw you out of their office. Some people may work in a different organizational context than I do, but in my world, every project starts with budgeting.
Uhu. As I mentioned above “if the social structure doesn’t support the culture, it will not hold”.
I put out a tweet in the week: Evolution Lesson: Split small group (Agile) from large group (pmBok). A evolves cooperative behaviour. Join A and B again. A prevails. I had a bunch of emails after that along the lines of “what the hell am I on about?”
Well I was trying to get over in 140 characters a little evolutionary algorithm I think all project managers need to be aware of, most particularly the PMI as they have no idea what they have just done.
To explain: Imagine a large community of people living on a big land squabbling over scarce resources. When you have large numbers of animals, genes get shuffled across a wide group, and any odd preferences that emerge get swamped out. So let’s say the sea level rises or a natural disaster occurs, or something else, and a small part of that community becomes separated from the larger, and this situation exists for a number of years. Now this small group have to survive on their own and tight cooperative behaviour will prove (over non cooperative) to be advantageous to survival. As the small population breed (shuffle genes between them) those who are cooperative will be selected for breeding more than others. This is one way that cooperative behaviour and traits get selected for, and how cooperative behaviour emerges (evolves). But the real cool thing is next. Imagine the sea level drops and the co-operators are now connected to the main group. Slowly, overtime, the cooperative trait (because the cooperators have a cooperative critical mass) will spread through the larger group.
Now apply this to the story of project management. The software community have been exiled from the main body of project management for many years. They didn’t fit, would never conform, would never comply to the “lets manage all projects as though we are building buildings” approach. So off they’ve been on their own little island collaborating and cooperating to build a methodology that would help them – Agile! So guess what’s happened? The PMBOKers in PMBOKtoe (aka PMI) have just built a land bridge across to the United Agilists and welcomed them back into the group. (Here’s the bridge: http://www.pmi.org/Certification/New-PMI-Agile-Certification/PMI-Agile-Toolbox.aspx)
Little do the PMBOKers know what they’ve done……. It’s like they’ve built the Agilist wooded horse for them!
Hey Jon,
That is an awesome and provocative idea!
PMBok contains common practices. If agile will replace the current common practices, the PMBok will just contain agile practices in the future and still be called PMBok. Could the agile name be dropped and can Agile live on as PMBoK?
I hope you get my question
I’d say that the PMBoK has captured (and locked down) many cultural norms and ideals about how projects should be managed. It doesn’t contain common practices because individuals and organisation don’t practice what’s in that book. But they do (wrongly I think) aspire to it.
My point in this piece is not that the PMBoK will absorb Agile…..although that’s the business model I suspect PMI are hoping for. But that Agile will weaken PMBoK and eventually pull the existing model apart. PMI functions by controlling or trying to control the project management body of knowledge in the broadest sense, and one of the keys to making this work is the stability of the PMBOK Guide. Notice how none of the material delivered at any of the PMI research conferences ever get into the PMBOK Guide. But Agile has emerged from the software development community, where a young demographic has never had so much influence over business and commerce. I’d go so far as to suggest that what we are calling Agile is more like common practice. It’s just that the Agilist have named and captured some of the practices. Very differently to the PMI, the Agile methodology is owned (if you can call it that) by its community who care nothing for using it to make money. They just want to develop it freely and openly so that it helps them, and give it away to those how find it useful. Once this mindset get inside PMI (and the land bridge will edge this on)it will have an impact on their business model. But that’s just my opinion
Hey Jon, that is a very thought provoking view! How do we know the agile approach is on a tipping point, so that it is powerful enough to replace another culture?