With regard to the above, one thing that I am seeing more and more is ... the fundamental value of classical project management practices.   People who are not experts in a particular field of expertise (be it computer-programming or plumbing) might know what they want to achieve but not how to say it; nor how to judge it.   They have money to spend but don’t know the prudent way to spend it.   They are always accountable to someone else (ad infinitum, right on up the line...) for the money and for the trust that they have vested in you and in your project plan.   We all have a natural aversion to “paperwork,” until we witness for ourselves the extreme value of it.   And, I think that we all like to think that our particular endeavors play by a different set of rules.   (We are constantly inventing a new set of industry-specific buzzwords and silver bullets.)   More often than not, though the practices that have been applied for a very long time in many other, seemingly unrelated disciplines, do apply very well to what we are doing for our daily bread.   It has been said, “if you want to find something new, look to the old.”   And I am finding that to be truth.