An interesting article showed up in Computerworld a couple days ago, entitled “The Ten Commandments of Project Management.” The author, James Kerr, suggests that “your company can position itself to enter the promised land of project-based culture” by adhering to the following commandments:

1. Thou shalt narrow project scope.
2. Thou shalt not suffer a fat team.
3. Thou shalt require full-time business participation.
4. Thou shalt establish project review panels.
5. Thou shalt not provoke burnout.
6. Thou shalt seek outside assistance as needed.
7. Thou shalt empower project teams.
8. Thou shalt use project management tools.
9. Thou shalt reward success.
10. Thou shalt not reward quick-and-dirty work efforts.

Well, I don’t think any of these are bad ideas, but I’m not sure they rise to the level of “commandments.” And from my own consulting practice and review of both successful and failed projects, I can report that (a) some projects follow all of these suggestions, and still fail; and (b) some (perhaps many) projects ignore one or more of the commandments — e.g., rewarding success, and refusing to reward quick-and-dirty work efforts — and still succeed.

So, while I think Mr. Kerr’s list is a great starting point for a discussion/debate within your own IT organization, it got me started on development of an alternative list of commandments. I’ll discuss them in a separate blog posting tomorrow…