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I partly agree with Paul from the article. I have extensive experience as an engineer and line manager, and I also obtained an Master's degree in Project Management a few years ago, as I viewed that discipline and knowledge essential to delivering larger projects successfully. I have never worked exclusively as a project manager although I have had that responsibility for a number of projects, but I do strongly agree that the process and discipline project management brings to the table is essential to an organization.

I have seen many instances, in organizations both large and small where the process appears to have supplanted the finished product as the deliverable. The problem seems to have been rooted in a number of different causes, but the result is the same. Being enamored with the project management process, or focusing on that process rather than the deliverable should be a trait of the project manager, not the entire team or the sponsor of the project.

I believe itis the role of the sponsor and perhaps other functional management to set some parameters regarding team members exposure to the process, and monitor to what depth the process may or may not need to be ingrained. In a smaller project, I would not expect a project manager to pull out a three-ring binder (metaphor here, most it is now electronic and impose that process structure. I would expect a subset of the process, tailored to the size of the project and the knowledge of the team. The full weight of most formal methodologies should be reserved for the mega-projects.