Different organizations, based on different cultures, have different limits on their acceptance of project management theory and practice.

In health care, the limit seems to be Earned Value Management (EVM). Despite being a neat tool for analyzing project performance, I’ve learned through experience that a normally energetic class will be asleep within 15 minutes of beginning that topic. I now cover it only in an advanced class.

For human services, it seems to be Critical Path Method (CPM) scheduling. People learn it and actively participate in the class and exercises, but ask “when would I ever do this?” I continue to teach it, but primarily with the hope that the class will recognize the need to understand dependencies between tasks, and how that affects the overall timeline.

What’s the limit in your experience?