Project Management Metaphors

• The Extended Mirror Metaphor (Timothy Johnson, 2008)- The use of extended mirrors to see beyond the present is an excellent metaphor for project planning because it stretches the thinking process and imagination to enter a space before physically entering it. In defining your requirements, you have to mentally go forward, then look in your rear view mirror and mentally drive backward through your project, define your route (plan your scope), and then actually drive forward.
• Helicopters Metaphor- helicopters allow the seeing of the forest with the simultaneity of allowing for zooming on the trees. For projects, this metaphor allows for overseeing the overall progress or zooming on certain tasks. We believe this metaphor may be further enriched by supplying the helicopters with infrared camera, CIS information system and meteorological data to capture information and plan ahead.
• Star Wars Metaphor (Phil Bennett, 2006) - This metaphor links the roles in the movie with the roles that project managers undergo
• The Chimpanzees Tea Party (Helga Drummond and Julia Hodgson, 2003) - This is a very interesting metaphor and in a way remind us of chicken herd. The Chimpanzees follow no rules and chaotic party results. How to bring order into project is what this metaphor provides skillfully. This metaphor highlights the limits of assumptions and shows how control-based approaches to project management can be counterproductive. Paradoxically, situations may arise where projects can be more effectively controlled by not attempting to impose control. This metaphor is in essence another example of the extended mirror metaphor.
• The Pie Metaphor (Kevin Shockey, 2005) - This is an interesting metaphor on how to allocate project resources to project tasks and how to expand on the share of a tasks pie. The pie metaphor gives a useful way to relate to management. Sometimes it is who puts on the biggest show that gets more pie.