Where is Your Project’s Uncertainty?

Two Sources of Project Uncertainty

Projects, by their nature, are uncertain, but not all uncertainty can be treated the same way. Knowing where your project’s uncertainty lies will help you choose the right approach to managing your project and delivering the best outcome for your team, your customer, and the project owner.

Many projects are time-bound, with specific dates that must be met. There are known parameters for the project outcome, but how you’re going to execute is uncertain. If your project is software or product development, which is iterative, most uncertainty lies in the deliverables; you’re not sure exactly what the deliverable will look like. In essence, you don’t know what you don’t know until you develop a prototype; you’re learning as you go. In these types of projects, there is little uncertainty in the process, but a lot of uncertainty in the outcome. This is different from, say, construction, where the deliverable is quite well defined. What is most uncertain are the events (like weather or errors) that lead to the deliverable. The process has the most uncertainty; the outcome has little.

Two Approaches to Managing

Scrum and Agile methods focus on iterations to shorten learning cycles and reduce uncertainty. The problem with these projects is that when a date is attached, it’s difficult to effectively manage schedule risk without significant time buffers.

If the uncertainty is in the process, most project managers reduce it by creating more detailed plans or (attempting to) closely manage the details in the plan. These projects have many moving parts and a lot of detail to manage – along with the normal uncertainty they cannot control, like the weather and mistakes. So, with all this comes complexity. That complexity is difficult to manage. Project managers lose control of their schedules. Project owners lose visibility into schedule risk. Projects run late, and firefighting ensues. It’s difficult and messy. Deadlines are missed. Costs go up. Customers are unhappy. Business is lost. Profits suffer.

Detailed Planning is Not the Cure-All

So, the solution is not in more detailed planning, but in improving management effectiveness. This is what the ViewPoint method does. Stripping the project plan to its essence. Doing simple things that leverage what we know about process behavior (Little’s Law, priority control, etc.). Making the process visual to quickly communicate critical items. Providing feedback on the project AND the delivery process to allow the team to act early on risk and improve their delivery effectiveness.

Taming Complexity

With ViewPoint, the team always knows the most critical items to work on and stays focused on them. There is less chaos in the project, so there is less stopping and starting. People can focus on the work, not on the next meeting. Tasks get done faster. Project durations are reduced. Costs go down. On-time delivery goes up. More projects are delivered. Revenue goes up. Profits go up. Project owners have visibility into schedule risk, so they can intervene when they must. Customers are happy. Project Managers are happy. The CEO is happy.

How to see schedule risk on the board is in Visualizing Projects and Spot Delivery Problems Early.