Work Management

Work Management is a paradigm for understanding, organizing and managing work. Often associated with Project Management, Work management encompasses all work—including work not traditionally associated with project-based work. In addition to project-based work, people typically contribute to other work, such as the repetitive processes associated with their everyday responsibilities, ad hoc assignments, work requests, personal tasks, etc… This work must also be taken into account and managed in order for business leaders to have maximum visibility, accurately plan for resource allocation, get greater team member contributions and to increase effectiveness and value in the work place.
Work, in the context of Work Management, includes four different subsets: Structured Work, Unstructured Work, Goals, and Requests. Project Management typically lives in the “Structured Work” subset of Work Management, along with other repetitive processes and program and portfolio management systems. “Unstructured Work” includes personal tasks, peer-to-peer requests, ideas, meetings, appointments and all other “ad hoc” assignments as they arise. “Goals” includes the necessary or imperative work done regularly, job role initiatives and MBOs. “Requests” accounts for e-mails, phone calls, chat or other inquiries and/or helpdesk requests, including those that could potentially originate via social media.
This method of management has been outlined by business analysts as the “future of program and portfolio management” and operates on the idea that “[http://www.gartnerinsight.com/purl.aspx?id=U281I4SpHyYksWjp1QaD5g%3d%3d everything is not a project; or not a project the way we’ve come to think about it and consider it].” One analyst describes work management in terms of “time to value” and “certainty of requirements” (see image 1.2).

People, not process, centric

Unlike traditional project management methods, Work Management is people, not process, centric. It operates on the belief that those who are closest to the work (individual contributors, team members, specialists, developers, users, etc.) understand it best and, therefore, should be empowered in their contribution through such mediums as increased autonomy and inclusion in decision-making processes, socialized recognition for accomplishments as well as being encouraged to take ownership of their work. This “Democratization” of the work management process is believed to improve and maximize value, efficiency, creativity and workplace harmony. And, because all aspects of an individual’s work are being managed and democratized, managers are enabled to make more informed and strategic decisions about which projects will provide the greatest business value.
Democratizing work and engaging employees
The work management theory argues that the democratization of the way work is managed requires those in management and leadership positions to consider first those who are doing the work. Mary Beth McEuen writes, “We need to redefine engagement and start seeing people as people first. People are more than the labels we put on them. They are more than a ‘human resource’. They are more than a ‘consumer’. By understanding them first as people, we are better able to engage them in ways that matter to what is important to them.” Many traditional approaches do just the opposite. Christina Barney writing in Businessweek, supports this view, “Common thinking is that employees need to be controlled, managed and monitored to ensure productivity. Smart … business owners are adopting the employee-driven workplace philosophy that translates into dramatically lower turnover rates and training costs, high customer satisfaction and greater profits…”
Giving the workforce a voice and input into project plans on commitment dates and even on decisions regarding whether a project makes sense to pursue in the first place are considered critical to a democratized work management process. Inviting team members to commit to due dates—following a negotiation if necessary—is purported to increase accountability and engagement. According to the Aspen Institute, “Work in the future will be organized in ways that are far more decentralized,” said Thomas W. Malone, Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. “I think we are in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in business that may, in the long run, be as important a change for business as the change to democracy was for governments. This is happening because cheap communication lets more people have enough information that they can make sensible decisions for themselves instead of just following orders from those above them in the hierarchy. And that means we can have the economic benefits of large-scale enterprises, such as efficiency and scale, and at the same time have the human benefits of small-scale such as motivation and flexibility.”
Work management theory
According to proponents of the work management theory, the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) describes a subset of work management that is often at odds with the way the modern workforce really works. Contrastingly, the work management approach embraces all sources of individual task, issue and project management methodologies to manage and organize projects and other work. Thus, a work management approach is not dependent upon any single execution methodology, like Agile/Scrum, NPD or Waterfall, because it recognizes that an individual’s work life is comprised of requirements from a variety of different sources and should be managed accordingly.
Most traditional project management methods employ a top-down planning style which attempts to align people, skills, time and activities; the plan is centrally owned and managed with people reporting status against a previously decided plan. A work management approach seeks to democratize the project plan and invites feedback on commitment dates from proposed project teams and individual task owners.
Origin of work management
In the early 1900s, an American engineer, Frederick Winslow Taylor, developed what he called “scientific management” to increase efficiency and improve the productivity of the workforce. The goal was to incorporate process into work, making it possible to more efficiently mass produce manufactured products. Daniel Pink describes this method: “Workers, this approach held, were like parts in a complicated machine. If they did the right work in the right way at the right time, the machine would function smoothly. And to ensure that happened, you simply rewarded the behavior you sought and punished the behavior you discouraged. People would respond rationally to these external forces—these extrinsic motivators—and both they and the system would flourish. We tend to think that coal and oil have powered economic development. But in some sense, the engine of commerce has been fueled equally by carrots and sticks.”
Although Taylor’s theories generally fell out of favor in the 1920s, many organizations still take a top-down, command-and-control approach. In response to this, the work management paradigm presents itself as a more modern and effective method for leading teams and organizing all work, based off of ideas such as those presented by Linda Adams, President of Gordon Training International, who suggests that an autocratic leadership style has a negative affect on an organization in terms of organizational culture and financial success, including a decrease in morale, loss of motivation and interest, low productivity, frequent absences from work, etc.
Work Management theory attempts to counteract those negative coping mechanisms by implementing a more collaborative, people-oriented and what it perceives as a more positive work environment for workers at every level of an organization.

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