Author: Mark

Shooting from the hip is fine when you are surprised with an unpredictable situation requiring immediate action. That is almost never the case in your project even though poor project planning might make it seem otherwise. Was the situation really unpredictable or would adequate risk management have shown you the possibility? Does it even require immediate action, or, do you just want to do something, anything, because you do not know what to do?

“Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.” ~ Sir John Harvey

“Projecting” without a plan leads to surprises. Most people and most teams do not function well with surprises. Surprises make major mistakes more likely. Major mistakes make failure more likely. Sure, planning will never be perfect and will never account for everything that could go wrong. But a well-built plan, focused clearly on your project’s purpose, will better prepare you for the more unpredictable things that might go wrong because you understand where you are going and how you intend to get there, and you have already considered other things that could go wrong and planned for them. No plan leads to perfect success. But no planning is likely to lead to perfect failure. Don’t be a project cowboy and shoot from the hip! Plan your project. And get help if you need it.

• Financial
• Supply Chain
• Vendor/ Subcontractor Solvency
• Personnel
• Mandated shutdowns or closures

1. Identify which parts of the project can continue, which will be slowed down, and which will be shut down in the current (and possibly future) scenarios.  Basically you are performing triage on your project.  Which of these activities were on your critical path?  If they were not critical, how long will it take before they become part of your critical path once you’re fully re-started.
2. Consider documenting your project’s status as fully as possible, especially if it is a project type that will be heavily impacted by shutdowns.  For example, a construction project cannot continue “remotely.”  So make sure to document your schedule, work completed, costs-to-date, and any issues that you were experiencing. Also, identify any activities that might be needed to stabilize your project so that it can be more easily re-opened after the shutdown.
3. Carefully evaluate your project’s underlying assumptions.  Include your unstated but essential assumptions.  Which of these are still valid under the new circumstances?
4. Thinking and planning are well-suited for lull times. Many project teams do not do enough project analysis during regular times as they get too busy fighting fires. Evaluate your project carefully. Are there any negative trends that you might not have noticed in the daily hustle and bustle?
5. Do you have a project risk register? Is it collecting dust on the shelf or do you use it regularly? Now is the time to blow the dust off of it and carefully update it. Look at the new risks your project faces from
6. If your project is a type that is heavily reliant on contracts, then do not forget to examine your contract risk. Force majeure is contract language that typically applies in situations outside of the control of either party. But look at the risks of literally applying your contract language. For example, your contracts may let you leave contractors or personnel hanging and may absolve you from any financial responsibility in this crisis. But will this further hurt your project if those resources are no longer available when you re-boot?
7. Depending on the extent of the impacts and possible project shutdowns, you should plan your re-boot carefully. If your project involves multiple team members whose work requires the same space or resources, then you might want to plan a phased re-start to ensure that everything goes smoothly and you.

People can have huge degrees of certainty about things which are not true.  You’ve probably seen this a lot in your discussions with others.  If you’re perceptive, you might have noticed it in yourself a few times.  When it comes to your project, is certainty ever justified?  Sure, you need to make the right decisions.  But are you better served by making a decision knowing that you are not certain or are you better served parading a false certainty?

Don’t fall prey to unwarranted certainty!  I came across a great phrase once, “strong opinions, weakly held.”  I’m not sure of the source but it stuck with me (if you know the source – email me below).  The idea was that you should develop the strongest opinion you can, one based on the best facts and logic you can muster.  But, and this is key, you should not invest your ego or your identity in that opinion.  Don’t make it so that if your opinion is wrong, you are personally crushed.  That is the “weakly held” part.  Have the best opinion you can have, but be humble enough to change it should new evidence come to light.  The same is true with projects and certainty.

All of your decisions rest upon assumptions.  You might not even be aware of some of the most critical assumptions.  But, even if you are, you cannot be certain that those assumptions are correct.  The key is to understand this and be able to live (and decide) with uncertainty.  Make the best decision you can based on the best assumptions you can make.  Identify those assumptions and understand them clearly.  And be ready to modify that decision as soon as you learn that a critical assumption is invalid.

If you are interested in learning more about these ideas, check out my book, Projects on Purpose 2.0, available here.

If you are are managing a project or projects and are interested in learning more about joining a project manager mastermind workshop – to gain professional development hours toward maintaining your certification (PDHs) and to work with other PMs and myself to learn to better overcome project challenges, email me at msteele@quintainprojectsolutions.com and put “PM mastermind query” in the subject line.  I am launching a new group at the end of October 2019.  Can you afford not to make better decisions on your project?  If we solve one problem together that you couldn’t solve on your own how much is it worth to your project and organization? What about to your career?  So hurry and sign up today!

Children’s tops spin well.  But when the spin is spent they fall over.  Too many projects go the same way.  Estimates and schedule forecasts are the subject of “spin” to match the business case and receive approval.  This might be intentional or unintentional.  With intent, the one seeking approval wants the approval but knows their numbers are probably not accurate.  When the spin is unintentional, often, confirmation bias plays a role in that the organization’s management really wants to do the project and is looking for evidence to confirm that they can do it within the constraints of the business case.  Of course, the third option is that there is not even a solid business case for the project at all but that goes beyond the realm of spin and into mismanagement.

In order to avoid spin, ask the following questions and dig in to find solid, evidence-based answers:

1.  What are the assumptions included in your business case relating to project justification, scope, estimate, and schedule?  Follow-ups include:

• Do you understand all of these assumptions?
• Have assumptions, sometimes in the form of caveats or boundary conditions to estimates and schedules, made it all the way to the decision-making level?  Many times they are present in the actual act of estimating but get dropped off the reporting as it moves through the layers of an organization.
• Are there any hidden or unidentified assumptions that are critical for success?
• Are there implied assumptions that must be true for the project to be successful but which are not certain and have not been questioned?

2.  How sensitive is your decision to changes in any one (or, most likely, more than one) of these?

3.  How quickly can you discover whether your assumptions are valid?  Schedule a decision point and plan to make a tough decision if needed.

4.  What is your walk-away number for your project?  Ensure that you know at what point it is not worth it to continue this project based on your business case justification.

5.  Does everybody involved in this process share the same agenda?

• How committed is everybody to the organization’s overall goals?
• Does everybody understand the full ramifications if this project is tried and is not successful?
• Is everybody trying to contribute to a rational, objective decision?
• Can anybody still win if the project turns out to be a loss?

If you approve a project based on the way it’s spun, you are likely to be unsuccessful!  Make sure you are asking the tough, right questions about your project.  At a high level, these are some of them, but it can also help to have an objective and experienced team member capable of asking more detailed questions and digging more deeply for answers.  If you need help, reach out to me.

Are you investing in project kryptonite that will kill your investment?  Do you even know?  How certain are you?  And, if you are certain, what evidence supports your certainty?  People feel certainty all the time about things that prove to be wrong.

Watch my short video on how you can avoid investing in project kryptonite!

Project decisions are fueled by assumptions. But are they valid? One of the keys to project success is to make each critical assumption transparent and then to try to validate it or invalidate it as quickly as possible.

When you’re using a map and a compass to get from point A to point B, you also rely on assumptions. But the map and compass provide you with a way to confirm or deny those assumptions if you know how to use them. Am I really traveling on a 175-degree azimuth? The compass can show you. Is this the east-west trail I was seeking? The compass tells you that it’s going roughly east-west into the wood line on each side. The map tells you that if you go west, and you are where you think you are then the trail will curve to your right. The contour lines on the map tell you that it will begin to go up a gentle slope. And, if you travel a few hundred meters, you should see a small stream on your right going down the hill and at an angle away from the trail.

So you head out. You think you are going west. And you think you were starting from the right spot on the right trail. Your job at this point is to confirm or deny those assumptions as quickly as possible. If you go into the wood line and the trail begins to slope downhill and curve to the left then something is wrong. Continuing to go that way will not get you to the point you are trying to reach.

In orienteering, the sport of finding points in the woods with a map and compass, one of the problems competitors face is that they try to make the landscape around them fit the map. They might be completely turned around and going the wrong direction, but that’s sort of uphill with a right curve. Sure, it curved a little to the left but then came back, didn’t it? It’s a form of confirmation bias to try to conform what you are seeing with what you thought you would see. But it will get you lost.

Project teams can do this too. They look for the facts that support the narrative they thought they would see and miss the danger signs. This sort of confirmation bias can be dangerous to your project because it prolongs the effect of flawed decisions based on invalid assumptions. You keep going toward what you think is point B, but it is not. One of the ways to overcome this is to get an objective assessment of your project from somebody that knows how to identify and question your basic assumptions. And the sooner the better. The more time and money you spend going in the wrong direction, the less ability you have to change directions and salvage your project.

Putting the right shaped piece into the right hole of a children’s puzzle is a matter of recognizing patterns.  Project problems often come in patterns of their own that are recognizable to the trained eye across multiple project types and industries.  Are you able to recognize the problematic patterns in your project?  If so, do you know how to fix them?