Back to Basics: Principles | Project Management Essentials

Project management is at an inflection point. Consistently delivering successful projects remains elusive despite an array of methodologies, frameworks, practices, and tools. Instead of chasing the “new, new thing,” we should concentrate on mastering the fundamental building blocks.

I outlined the current state of the industry and argued for returning to basics in the first article of this series. Here, I explore the importance of developing a clear set of guiding principles. In the future, I will delve into approaches and practices.

Why Principles?

Contents

Why Principles?
Which Principles?
Your Guiding Principles

Principles serve as conceptual guideposts. They shape our thinking, guide decision-making, and act as guardrails. Principles transcend approaches and practices, allowing us navigate the complexity of our projects, business environments, and changing trends. They should be aspirational and motivate doing “the right thing” for the right reasons.

Guiding principles provide clarity and focus. Peter Senge describes “process myopia” as a type of organizational tunnel vision that also affects project management. It is the syndrome of chasing trends or prioritizing process adherence over value delivery.

The rush to adopt Agile offers a clear example. Too many organizations inverted the value of ‘Individuals and interactions over process and tools.” They implemented Agile practices without changing the culture. Agile was blamed when the real culprit was a failure to respect one of its core principles.

Principles create a shared understanding and a sense of purpose. They help individuals, teams, and organizations align around a clear vision and objectives, enabling empowerment and autonomy. Unlike rules that might not suit every situation, principles provide universal guidance for understanding and navigating complexity.

Which Principles?

There is no shortage of project management principles. Ultimately, individual project managers and teams must decide what is meaningful to them. Context-sensitive tailoring is essential to ensure that the guiding principles fit the industry needs, the organization’s culture, and the project environment.

For example, empowered decision-making may benefit software development teams by fostering creativity and innovation, leading to improved solutions, faster delivery, and higher morale. While adhering to standards, guidelines, and design may fit the construction phase of a highway project, maintaining a safe work environment that complies with relevant regulations is essential.

Simple, clearly stated values are best for managing complexity. Instead of trying to predict every situation, they offer a “commander’s intent” and set objectives that can be acted on even in the “fog of war.” Limiting the principles to three to five is recommended. Too many become overwhelming, making it less likely they will be followed.

The following is an inexhaustive list of principles derived from leading project management and agile sources. They can serve as a starting point for defining the values that guide teams and organizations.

Lean Principles

Lean principles evolved from the Toyota Production System and are foundational to many modern management practices, including the PMBOK® Guide, the Agile Manifesto, most Agile frameworks, and quality improvement methods. While some principles are unique to manufacturing environments, others are universal and relevant to project work.

Kaizen—Continuous improvement. Kaizen is translated from Japanese as “small change for good.” The belief that small, incremental changes deliver the greatest value and that everyone—especially line workers—should be engaged in the process.

Jiddoka—Build quality at the source. Build quality into the process and empower workers to fix problems rather than letting them flow downstream.

As Deming said, “You cannot inspect quality into a product; it must be built into it.” Building quality into the product and the project processes is critical. Creating a culture that embraces safety and delivering products of the highest possible quality are foundational.

Respect for People. Build mutual trust and responsibility among employees, partners, and stakeholders.

PMI’s PMBOK® Guide

The Project Management Institute updates its Body of Knowledge about every four years. The PMBOK® is community-sourced, reflects evolving industry trends, and is an ANSI standard. The 7^th Edition was published in 2021 and marked a significant shift in perspective. Previous versions of the Guide emphasized project management processes. The 7^th Edition shifted its focus to a dozen guiding principles. PMI released the 8^th Edition in November 2025, which refined and reduced the number of principles to six.

The most compelling and universally applicable principles in the two editions are:

Stewardship. Be a diligent, respectful, and caring steward of resources and relationships; and

Be an accountable leader: Guiding the project team with integrity, making responsible decisions, and fostering a culture of trust and responsibility.

Focus on value. The primary objective of a project is to provide value. The definition of value is project-specific and serves as the North Star.

Adopt a holistic view. Embracing systems thinking and understanding the interconnections and interdependencies uncovers influences that can support or disrupt project success.

Tailoring. Tailor based on context. Tailoring how to manage and execute a project based on context is critical. However, the Disciplined Agile values describe this better (see below).

Quality. Embed quality into processes and deliverables.

Build an empowered culture. Empowerment is a consistent theme and contributes to a culture of accountability.

The Agile Manifesto

Agile is a mindset, not a methodology. It is built on four values and 12 principles. Since Agile was developed to support software projects, many of its principles are domain-specific to knowledge-work projects. However, several of the principles are extensible,

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Projects focus on people and our ability to coordinate and organize efforts to achieve what we could not do alone. Processes and tools should support these efforts, but cannot replace the importance of human relationships when executing projects.

Responding to change over follow a plan. Von Motke first stated in 1871 that “No plan survives contact with the enemy,” and this principle still holds true today. Projects must be willing to adapt to changing circumstances.

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. Creating the culture and environment where people are inspired to do their best is universally applicable.

Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential. Most enterprise environments are characterized by processes and controls that purport to add value but do little to do so. Simplicity reduces waste and enables teams to be more effective.

Disciplined Agile

Disciplined Agile describes itself as a hybrid toolkit for delivering IT solutions. The knowledge base is a curated list of over 1,000 process options, with considerations for making those decisions. DA also includes a set of principles, promises, and guidelines.

The three principles of Context PCounts, Be pragmatic, and Choice is Good create a foundational approach to intentional project management. Every project, team, organization, and industry is unique. Recognizing and understanding the context allows for thoughtful tailoring. Being pragmatic means focusing on being effective rather than blindly following a methodology or framework. The more we know, the more choices we have, the better decisions we can make.

Your Guiding Principles

Principles are the foundation upon which successful projects and project teams are built. They keep us focused and establish the North Star that guides our work.

Tailoring our principles based on context is critical. Consequently, crafting the “right” principles for your industry and organization should be based on its unique needs. The principles should be meaningful, clearly stated, and motivate the desired behaviors and outcomes.

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Back to Basics, Part 2: Principles