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Project fogs are maddening. They are:
- Pervasive;
- Sensed by all;
- Capable of frustrating excellent plans;
- Have broad impact on project performance;
- Complex and, like all things complex, require reams and reams of reports to define thoroughly making it virtually impossible to understand on paper. Nothing specific jumps out;
- Unable to be resolved with a quick fix;
What does a project manager do? The answer is simple and can be stated in a paradox, “Embrace the project fog.” To do this the fog must first be understood.
When a project starts “things happen” and the fog begins to roll in. It shows up at boundaries taking the form of technical problems along with the environment and key stakeholders being confused, undirected, uncooperative, unsupportive or even antagonistic. The project manager is faced with the challenge of getting the project moving again while staying within the triple constraint of scope, time, and budget.
Brittle Plans
Usually, no plan is perfect. The reason is the plan is an abstract and a distillate of the planning process. It contains what the team thinks will work based on certain assumptions and is drawn from a larger universe of possible solutions.
Within project constraints the wisdom of the team is forged into the knowledge-based plan.
There can be alternatives built in but no plan is omniscient. So, things happen and the plan can become brittle and break. This is why toy makers have children play with the final product. A two year old can quickly find limits and defects in a product developed by a room full of engineers.
The Solution: Embrace the Fog
To disperse project fogs the project manager and team must embrace it. Embracing the project fog means dealing with it on its own terms. It means finding something that is equally pervasive, can be felt by all, and has a broad, positive impact across the difficult boundary. The solution has some other characteristics. It is:
- Readily implementable;
- Truly simple, i.e., dispels most or all of the fog by resolving all the conflicts and uncertainties;
- Ultimately easily documented, and;
- Seen by all as being a realistic solution;
The solution is the fog’s equal in terms of appearance and a countermanding positive performance. It is the team’s wisdom focused into a new or modified deliverable and/or process commonly called the workaround.
Yes, the word that gets beaten and abused – viewed as something just about anyone can do so, hop to it and git ‘er done. The fact is a truly good workaround that satisfies everyone from conceptual engineer to maintenance technician could be quite sophisticated and frequently a work of art.
The workaround’s simplicity can be viewed by the uninitiated as simple-minded.
I doubt anything could be further from the truth. Why? There is no linear, detailed, step-by-step path to the solution. The successful workaround reflects a power arising from and distributed across the diverse team, not resident in any one person or thing. Changing the team members or distracting them with too much work can disrupt the dynamic and turn off the ability to embrace the project fog.
So, when confronted with project fog embrace it! Pull your nose out of the details, put the team in charge, turn them loose, buy the coffee, soda, and pizza. Let them create the simple, documentable, durable solution. Watch them work their magic!
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