I attended the Northeast Wisconsin PMI Chapter's Professional Development Day on April 23. NEW PMI is a great chapter (I'd say that even if I wasn't a founding officer) and they consistently get great presenters at their PDDs.
This year, highlights included Dr. Ginger Levin, my favorite professor (and now colleague) at UW-Platteville. Tom Mattus of SSI Inc did two presentations, both of which were interesting and fun to be a part of.
Jack Ferraro's closing presentation was interesting, if not alarmist. In a nutshell, Jack told us that project management is becoming commoditized. I can see his point, and he had some solid supporting data and premises. But, I think he's mostly wrong. Here's why:
You can certainly break many PM functions into components and hand them over to specialists. But except on massive projects where things like scheduling, risk management, procurement management, etc are full-time jobs unto themselves, why would anyone want to?
For most organizations, it makes sense to have these PM functions as well as the project leadership in the hands of one person who has only their employer's interests in mind when performing. Outsourcing key PM functions puts them in the hands of someone with a conflicting fiduciary duty - their loyalty is to their company, not yours.
That's why, when you contract or outsource to another firm, they can have an "engagement" or "delivery" manager, but their is only one PM - yours.
Jack did make a solid point - leadership is where it's at - the most respected PMs are able to bring teams together and lead. The magic happens not with perfect MS Project schedules, elegant WBSs, but with successfully led projects. So far, no one has been able to commoditize leadership in project management. I think that's Jack's ultimate message, and he's right on.
