PM : The Final Frontier - Episode 3 | by Phil McGrath

These are the voyages of a curious INFP, “broad brush” practitioner, Fleet Captain Phil E Stein, aboard the Starship PESTEL.

His ongoing mission: To explore the strange world of Project Management, to seek out new acronyms and methodologies, to boldly go where no “broad brush” has gone before, to follow a Critical Path Analysis and to try very hard not to crash.

Start date: Late August 2022

There was excitement aboard the PESTEL today as we were due to explore a newly discovered planet referred to as “e79” on the radar. Mr Stock was keen to understand how the requirements of the Starship PESTEL could be enhanced through the resources available from the planet and he proposed landing on the surface to gather samples and further information.

“Once we have gathered the information,” said Stock, “then Ms Q can analyse it and Dr Gantt can prioritise any further action!”

It seemed a logical course of action (Stock’s ideas usually were!), so plans were made to land on the planet and collect samples.  On the planet, we gathered as much information as possible from the desolate surface and then brought the samples back to the PESTEL to explore further. Ms Q and her team of analytical drones went to work on analysing the gathered samples and then we could make some decisions about what to do next.

“It looks like we’ve struck gold with this one,” said Q after a couple of hours in the lab.

 “Why, what is it?” Asked Captain Phil.

“Er... Gold” replied Q with a tone which amused Stock and confused Phil in equal measures.

“So Captain, we need to decide on our course of action.” said Gantt “E79 can provide enough resources to power the PESTEL for further explorations or..... we could just settle here in luxurious bliss for the rest of our days?”

Captain Phil’s response was almost immediate “This journey of exploration is only just beginning to make any sense to me and the GAP in my knowledge of requirements management is only surpassed by the space between my ears. The mission of the PESTEL is not yet complete and our Critical Path will take us further into the Project Management Multiverse, we use the resources from e79 to delve deeper!”

Stock smiled and nodded in agreement “and great use of GAP Captain!” he whispered.

Phil returned the smile thinking to himself  “I’ve absolutely no idea what he meant by that”.

So, the mock happened, the mind went blank and, like Captain Phil, I just couldn’t recall the three stages of requirements management until the hour was up and “pow!” there it was!! I’ll certainly remember G-A-P in my next paper! Gather, Analyse and Prioritise *SIGH*!

It’s what we do when we’re planning a project, it’s how we set our plans and write our Project Management Plan, it really isn’t rocket science – grrr!

As Captain Phil E Stein points out though, there’s still a journey to complete and there’s plenty of “gold” to uncover in the rest of the Multiverse, I’ve just got to get better at remembering it and get quicker at writing down the key points – as Brucie says “points make prizes!”

 Phil McGrath is a Project Management apprentice and has been writing for the Apprentice Lens.