# My problem with project management By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2022-08-18 An area I struggle with is project management from a traditional business sense. It's not that I don't think that the processes to manage projects and get things done are unfounded. KanBan, Sprints, Agile, etc. These things are useful and the "[[efficiency]]" mindset given to me by my Industrial Engineering education implores me to use them to get stuff done. However, I think these systems have significant limitations, especially when it comes to [[knowledge]] [[work]], or work that requires humans to be humans and not machines. When humans are treated as [[Robots]], such as on an assembly line, then these project management tools generally work well. Although some work better than others, that's for another discussion. These systems work well under these conditions because the processes are well defined and highly repeatable. Essentially, if we think that "AI" or a robot could one day do that job, then it's probably a great candidate for "project management." This all falls apart when humans are needed to think and create because thinking and creativity is anything but well defined and highly repeatable. In these situations, project management becomes all about capital M management. It's about trying to bring [[control]] to the unknown and unpredictable. This mindset strikes me as completely wrong. It's not only wrong for this kind of work, but it's likely been an axiom of management that has been categorically incorrect since the dawn of [[scientific management]] in 1900-whatever. Interestingly enough you can likely draw a straight line from slavery management principles to early scientific management and then to most modern management approaches today. I haven't found a silver bullet linking all of these ideas, so it is just a theory, but there if you are curious to come to your own conclusions you can start with [[The Management Myth]] So, where do I go from here when faced with the job to manage human teams working on human tasks? My inclination is to synthesize something new that isn't "classic project management" or "do whatever you want", but I'm not sure what that is quite yet. #### Related Items [[Project Management]] [[Knowledge Work]] [[Management]] [[Mindset]]