First saw this post at Virginia Postrel's site. The originally referenced post is by her other half, Dr. Steven Postrel here. Dr. Postrel writes:
A peculiar fact about business schools (at least in the USA) is that project management is not part of the regular MBA curriculum. Why is this peculiar? Only because a huge percentage of the work managers do is organized into projects, the success or failure of strategies often rests on the quality of execution of projects, and many of the principles and techniques of good project management are not immediately obvious. But hey, if anyone needs to know about this trivial stuff they can always go to a two-day workshop and get a certificate (probably from an engineering department). Or learn it on the job, which in this context often means screwing things up and trying to guess what you did wrong.
I guess on the one hand, I would agree that core management "science" topics (a bucket in which project management perhaps fits into) should be covered in business schools. That said, similar to a somewhat controversial post I wrote here on ethics courses in business schools, my perspective (from the vantage point of an MBA alum rolling back time and putting himself in an MBA student's shoes) would be that I would not have wanted to shovel out top dollar for that type of course as a customer of the business school product. Project management is a knowledge base and skill set that many people pick up on the job, regardless of whether effectiveness of process, tools, and outcomes are measured systematically. At least I would not have wanted to pay for a project management course in a naked form. The topic could be combined with some other product, such as a product development/management, consulting methods, change management, operations, or governance course. Although I am clearly biased, I think it could play well in a consulting course, especially since projects and engagements are related (but different animals).
