I had a very strange conversation with a friend the other day. It started off simply enough: he has recently started working in a project management role in a public body, and was wondering what the preferred format for risk logs was. He knew I have worked in that area before, so asked me what it was.

But what came out from the conversation was that he was only asking now as someone from the head office was coming to take a look at the project. Previously, my friend had been getting along without knowing the preferred format by simply not having a risk log!

I imagine you’re as surprised as I was. But it got worse – apparently my friend wasn’t using a risk log because his new boss didn’t believe they were necessary. So as there was no call for a risk log from above, my friend just didn’t bother with one.

By this point, I was horrified. It was bad enough that he was running his project without a risk log. But his reasoning for this, that his boss hadn’t asked for one, betrayed something even more worrying. It suggested to me that he would only normally have a risk log because someone else expected it, because it was another box he needed to tick.

Now that’s worrying. I could forgive him not having a risk log if he had thought about it and decided the project wasn’t complex enough to need one, though I’m having trouble imagining I could come to that decision myself. Unfortunately, it sounds like he hadn’t thought about what was needed for this particular project, and was only now putting in place a risk log as a paper exercise.

That betrays a lack of understanding about project management. The techniques and tools that we learn as project managers aren’t there so we can tick the boxes. The techniques and tools are there because they help us to run projects well!

But they can only help. To get value out of them, we have to understand the principles behind them. We have to know why we are doing the things we do, not just how.

What my friend appeared to be doing was painting by numbers – project management by numbers, if you will. He knew the things that had to be done, and when, so he just got on and did them. But he didn’t seem to be showing any understanding of why he was doing these things.

All this got me thinking – how many more of these “project management by numbers” project managers are there? Has the popularity of some project management courses led to us churning out project managers who know what to do, but not why? Is this why we see so much bad project management?

What do you think?

Oh, and in my friend’s defence, this is his first project management role! He quickly saw the value of risk logs, and I have no doubt he’ll use them well. All he needs is more experience. Do other “by the numbers” project managers have that excuse?