"A fool with a tool is a dangerous thing" I heard some one once say. Walking around in the project management profession only makes me a stronger believer of this expression. Especially the checklists and templates available are great project killers. How so?
Are you a true believer of the nifty little project helpers that assist in not forgetting anything? Or do you hate the tools that preprocess the project environment so management doesn't have to use common sense? Take your pick.
As the advantages of project tools like checklists and templates are more widely known, I'll give you just two examples of fools running around with them.
I have actually seen a project manager fill in a risk analysis in an application. The guy answered questions like a madman, to conclude in the end that his project had a risk factor of 6.89. Then man was very happy, and checked his list (!) that he had done risk management for his project. To make things worse, when stating the project had a score of 6.89 the entire project board was very happy. No one actually knew what the number said, what to do, or anything. Including project management.
More widely available is the filling in of templates, just for the template's sake… For the project totally irrelevant questions are answered, with made up answers, just to fill in the blank. Just look at the life cycle of templates. They are born with a guideline how to use them, but during their lives, these descriptions are the first ones to be thrown out of the project management guides.
If you don't get the stupidity of the examples above, it may be already too late for you and your tool.
If you get the subtilty, you might want
to check your company if it is vulnerable for this kind of behavior. For this you have to determine to BSS-factor, bull shit stickiness. Just make up a very professional sounding term, like partial intergral superial testing. Write it in a memo, suggest it during meetings. See if it will be used by someone else then you. The more this person is unrelated to you, the higher the factor.
A high BSS-factor and your company is a fool's garden.
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