APM Blogs

Project professionals have never been under greater international scrutiny.

Welcome to the latest in a series of blog posts that aim to make the case for applying systems thinking to project management.

As the popularity of APM’s chartered standard shows, project management is slowly starting to be held in the same regard as professions such as engineering, accounting and insurance.

Wherever possible in project management, vagueness should be your enemy.

The upcoming summer edition of Project journal includes a deep-dive feature on the topic of ‘sector shifters’ – project professionals who’ve jumped from one sector to another and gained a great deal from the experience.

The rapid evolution of project management was illustrated most clearly when APM’s President David Waboso commented that we were uniquely honoured to share the success of a Royal Charter with those who originally found the profession.

Project professionals are faced with a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world – as if anyone needed reminding of that in 2020.

This year our Power of Projects conference was a significant one.

In 1995, Martin Cobb, the CIO of the Secretariat of the Treasury Board of Canada, said: “We know why projects fail, we know how to prevent their failure – so why do they still fail?” This became known as Cobb’s Paradox, and while we could argue that this absolutist statement is not completely true, there is no doubt that we have a lot of knowledge about how to run projects and more seem to fail than should be the case.

So, what was it really like starting your first ever job outside of university during the COVID-19 pandemic? No site visits, no colleagues at the next desk to answer questions, no physical interaction, everything being virtual.