The Everlasting Importance

of a Common Project Management Language

COMMENTARY

By Massimo PIrozzi

Rome, Italy

In each community, the use of a common language is not only a technical aspect that is needed in order to establish a common communication domain, but is, more generally, a common value of belonging, the knowledge and the proper use of which are required to be considered a fully-fledged member of the community itself. In fact, each community recognizes itself in its own language: therefore, the choices of common languages and communication formats are bold decisions, which correspond to deep bonds in terms of identification, affiliation, and efficient practice (Pirozzi, 2019). Definitively, a common language represents a deep sense of identification and of membership, and this is in general valid in all the diverse cases, e.g. for the natural languages and dialects, for the business and/or social languages that are used within the organizations, and for the professional languages that are adopted by the diverse communities of practice. Therefore, the learning of a new language is never a casual event-driven automatism, but is always the result of a personal strategic decision that implies the determination of becoming a member of the correspondent community. Moreover, an effective communication – and an interactive communication itself – is possible only if people, organizations, and communities find some mutual understanding of their diverse languages, and, then, succeed to set up, maintain, and improve a common communication domain.

In addition, each language is “alive”, and has its own life cycle. Its evolutionary survival is evidently a metric of success relevant to the community that identifies with it, while, on the contrary, a language that diverges in different “dialects” –  each one of them most of the times is convinced of representing the “true” language – may cause the fragmentation,  and the consequent impoverishment, of its  original community. In today’s globalized world, both the continuous availability of new – especially social – media and the increasing importance of different “influencers” determine emergent levels of languages contamination, which tend to distinguish the members of the diverse communities with respect to the outsiders, by recognizing immediately the “holders” of a common language and, then, by discriminating the others.

Ultimately, in a professional community, the capability of preserving and upgrading a common professional language is foundational for the maintaining and for the development of the discipline, which definitively corresponds to the mission and the vision of the community itself. In the case of the project management, there are several key factors that determined its success, including efficacy, efficiency, universal applicability, and the capability of facing complexity, but the spread in the world of the discipline was evidently made possible by the existence, the use and the development of a common professional language, which, by the way, still guarantees the great added value of enabling an immediate content sharing among the project team – and this is an efficiency aspect that is considered worldwide of primary importance by multidisciplinary teams. On its side, the success of the project management common language was, and still is, due to its “practical” nature, which of course derives from the fact that project management discipline itself is based on good practices. Then, project management practitioners have the opportunity to adopt a common professional language that is based on evidence-based practices, and that, therefore, do not oblige them to a preliminary – and often resigned! – acceptance of specific theories, or even of alternative and/or complementary approaches.

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How to cite this paper: Pirozzi, M. (2021), The Everlasting Importance of a Common Project Management Language, PM World Journal, Vol. X, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/pmwj109-Sep2021-Pirozzi-The-Everlasting-Importance-of-a-Common-Project-Management-Language.pdf

About the Author

Massimo Pirozzi

Rome, Italy

Massimo Pirozzi, MSc cum laude, Electronic Engineering, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Principal Consultant, Project Manager, and Educator. He is a Member of the Executive Board and of the Scientific Committee, and an Accredited Master Teacher, of the Istituto Italiano di Project Management (Italian Institute of Project Management). He is certified as a Professional Project Manager, as an Information Security Management Systems Lead Auditor, and as an International Mediator. He is a Researcher, a Lecturer, and an Author about Stakeholder Management, Relationship Management, and Complex Projects Management, and his papers have been published in U.S.A., in Italy, and also in Russia; in particular, he is the Author of the innovative Book “The Stakeholder Perspective: Relationship Management to enhance Project value and Success”, CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton (FL), U.S.A., October 2019. Due to the acknowledgement of his comments on stakeholder-related issues contained in Exposure Draft of The Standard for Project Management – 7th Edition, he has been recognized as one of the Contributors and Reviewers of The PMBOK® Guide – Seventh Edition, and he received the Certificate of Appreciation for Excellence for his volunteer contributions to the Project Management Institute and the project management profession in 2020.

Massimo Pirozzi has a wide experience in managing large and complex projects, programs, and portfolios in national and international contexts, and in managing business relations with public and private organizations, including multinational companies, small and medium-sized enterprises, research institutes, and non-profit organizations. He worked successfully in several sectors, including Defense, Security, Health, Education, Engineering, Logistics, Cultural Heritage, Transport, Gaming, Services to Citizens, Consulting, and Web. He was also, for many years, a Top Manager in ICT Industry, and an Adjunct Professor in Organizational Psychology. He is registered as an Expert both of the European Commission, and of Italian Public Administrations.

Massimo Pirozzi is an Accomplished Author and an International Editorial Advisor of PM World Journal. He received three 2020 PM World Journal Editor’s Choice Awards for his featured paper “Project Management for Evidence Based Medicine” (co-authored with Dr. Lidia Strigari), for his Article “Project communications 1.0 and 2.0: from information to interactivity” and for his report from Italy titled “The fight against Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) from the perspectives of projects and of project management”. He received also two 2019 PM World Journal Editor’s Choice Awards for his featured paper “Stakeholders, Who Are They?”, and for his report from Italy titled “PM Expo® and PM Maturity Model ISIPM-Prado®”, and a 2018 PM World Journal Editor’s Choice Award for his featured paper “The Stakeholder Management Perspective to Increase the Success Rate of Complex Projects”.

Massimo can be contacted at max.pirozzi@gmail.com.

To view other works by Massimo Pirozzi, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/massimo-pirozzi/