“Project management is simply the application and execution of structured, organized, common sense.”
James T. Brown, PhD, PMP in The Handbook of Program Management
While Dr. Brown captures the core of how I view project management and its associated methodologies, more specifically I think that project management methodologies are just tools – you should have an assortment of them, clearly and deeply understand their intended purposes, strengths and weaknesses, and apply them where and when they fit. This principle is the basis for how my team manages projects and from which I write this blog.
Pragmatic project management builds from this foundation of common sense and incorporates ideas rooted in Agile philosophy and my own experience to provide a basis for project managers to approach their toolkits as craftspeople do, knowing which tools to apply to which jobs for the best results. With the blog I seek to achieve clarity about the strengths and weaknesses of tools in our kits, to challenge misconceptions about them and in the discourse about their uses, and through discussion, to build our common sense in their application.
