PM Training: Not "One Size Fits All"

Whether you call it The Vanishing Mass Market (as Business Week has done), or The Long Tail, (as Wired blogger Chris Anderson terms it) or Nouveau Niche, it's obvious that the way we interact with the marketplace has changed. Consumers want what they want, not some lowest-common-denominator, one-size-fits-all product. That's why we have 100 specialized channels of cable TV instead of three networks.

On the organizational level, we've seen that companies are less interested in generic PM training, and more drawn to training solutions that are tailored to one industry, one company, one culture: theirs.

Now, it's long been a matter of pride with project management experts that PM itself is a generalist. Project managers are fond of boasting, "have PMP will travel." that their skills apply just as easily to an IT project as to construction or a lunar landing. That may be true--certainly the basic techniques of PM are industry-agnostic--but if I were a CEO I'd want to be sure the lessons I was paying for were lessons immediately applicable to my business. Wouldn't you?

That's why -- and here's another prediction -- project management training will become less oriented to PMP self-study courses, and more "nouveau niche": customized to industry and even to individual organization. Hats off to the curriculum developers (this one's for you, Helene!): they will make all the difference. They make training solutions more nimble, more responsive ... even, you might say, agile.