Project excellece or failure? Doing is the best kind of learning

Project management1 has been around for decades. and has also evolved over time. Likewise, the author has worked for a few decades in Industry with a prime focus on project management. Various flavors and even evangelists exist, from PMI2, IPMA3, Prince24, Agile5 and more. The author has had experiences with several of these flavors. Unfortunately for many years, a substantial amount of projects still does not deliver on time, on budget or worse do not create the value expected. It has been published in various media and type of organizations, from research to industry and government for example by organizations such as The Standish Group and others. It seems that despite of all the project evaluations, we have not learned from all those past projects. Nor did all the development in methods and tools help us overcome this problem, or it might be due to other factors such as the human factor, as has been subject of the Dutch National Research Group (DNRG6) on Project Management under the umbrella of IPMA. Why does this problem keep manifesting itself? And of course the question arises, how do we learn best? Time to rethink project management? The current article intends to provide Young Professionals some tips or at least food for thought, based on a personal retrospect based on just a few cases from the author's past experiences. In particular, it aims to give the members of the IEEE Young Professionals a perspective for a bright future, given the large number of technological, innovation, societal projects, and business ventures expected as we enter the era of digital transformation. © 2016 IEEE.