{"id":100,"date":"2016-07-20T00:12:32","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T23:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/i3works.bluetree.uk\/news\/?p=100"},"modified":"2019-12-08T21:43:42","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T21:43:42","slug":"delivering-complex-projects-is-planning-a-waste-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/2016\/07\/delivering-complex-projects-is-planning-a-waste-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Delivering complex projects: Is planning a waste of time?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In his latest blog, company \ndirector Martin Paver looks into the role of planning in delivering \ncomplex resources and why this is important for project delivery and \nperformance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: Martin Paver Director at i3Works<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been associated with the development of strategies and delivery \nof projects for the majority of my career. We work in a complex world \nthat is forever evolving. The impact of external factors, the evolution \nof internal dependencies and continual realignment of business \npriorities build a climate of uncertainty that creates a number of \nchallenges for project delivery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote a blog on managing complexity in December last year, which \nhelps to frame an approach, However, despite reading extensively about \nproject, programme and portfolio management, I\u2019m convinced that our \nindustry significantly underplays how to manage uncertainty. Whilst I \nagree that an agile approach helps us to time box delivery, agile tends \nto lead to an over simplification of the management of complex \ndependencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many practitioners tend to jump straight into planning a project by \nworking through the steps of product breakdown, work breakdown and \nschedule. There is a raft of blogs on the subject. However, this ignores\n the lack of certainty inherent in the foundations of a lot of projects.\n Teams can spend an inordinate amount of time planning, only to find \nthat the foundation of the plan is built on imprecise assumptions; built\n on sand. Detailed plans can often give the illusion that the project \nmanager is in control, but how many projects have you worked on where \nthis isn\u2019t the case? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As project managers we attempt to manage uncertainty through the use \nof risk and issue logs, where we try and predict the things in the \nfuture that will trip us up. We tend to start with a blank sheet of \npaper and build outwards, ignoring the rich seam of experience inherent \nwithin the organisation\u2019s corporate knowledge bank. Many projects also \nstruggle to differentiate between the uncertainty associated with \nproject options (major decisions and option points) and the risk of \nexecution not going to plan. They are different things, but a lot of \norganisations manage them as one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we are to lift the industry we need to think differently and work \nwith uncertainty, rather than trying to constrain delivery within \npredefined boundaries. In my experience these boundaries tend to be \nartificial, using stated assumptions within an assumption log, which \noften result in an explosive reaction when the assumptions are \nbreached. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to success lies in a few key principles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Identify uncertainty and work with it. It\u2019s important to identify \nthe questions that the project is seeking to answer, or the \nbenefits\/value that project is striving to realise. We can then plot how\n we answer these questions against a timeline, charting our way through \nthe cone of uncertainty.<\/li>
  2. We need to characterise the implications of uncertainty, \nunderstanding its trajectory\/vector, proximity, impact and the influence\n that we have over it. We can then schedule in key milestones or \ninterventions to help drive in certainty, or as a minimum, consciously \nagree how we manage it rather than unconsciously stumbling through it. <\/li>
  3. We consider the volatility (the nature, speed, volume and magnitude\n of change), uncertainty (the extent to which we can predict an \noutcome), the complexity (the lack of clarity in cause and effect) and \nambiguity (the lack of clarity about what an event means for the \nproject.) Capturing these, running high level scenario analysis and \nrunning analytics helps us to understand where we are and the potential \ndirection of travel for both the project and the portfolio. However, I \nwould caution against excessive modelling because project environments \nare often adaptive, emergent and non-linear, i.e. it\u2019s difficult to 2nd<\/sup> guess the impact of a change.<\/li>
  4. Live with the uncertainty. It\u2019s often very difficult to nail \neverything down at the start. You may convince yourself that all the \nfoundations are sound, but how often have you proceeded on the basis of \nassumptions that haven\u2019t been adequately validated? Emergence within the\n project environment can undermine some of the basic foundations for the\n investment or for project success.   <\/li>
  5. Ensure that the schedule reflects where we are in the cone of \nuncertainty. Developing a schedule helps to unite a team, achieve \nconsensus and enable people to work to one plan. But putting in too much\n detail can result in nugatory effort. The balance is something that \ncomes from experience, rather than a predefined formula. <\/li>
  6. We also need to learn from the past. This may range from \nbenchmarking performance against similar projects, utilising modular \nbased planning which encapsulates good practice, identifying the \nhistorical influence of uncertainty, risks and issues on process \nsuccess, applying corporate knowledge and also taking advantage of peer \nassists. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    So what do we do with all this information? For me, it all feeds into\n project controls and provides a rich picture to support key decisions \nand identify key opportunities for intervention. The key is to work at a\n level of abstraction in the first instance to identify areas of focus \nand outliers, then drilling down into detail when appropriate. This \nenables agility in decision making within the project, portfolio and \nexecutive level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I\u2019m not advocating using this approach on all projects because it \nneeds to be proportional. We invest a huge amount of energy into \nplanning, almost irrespective of stability in the baseline, however, I\u2019m\n not convinced that we invest enough resources in identifying, \ncharacterising and managing uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I am working on a current assignment that is hugely complex and \ngetting to grips with uncertainty is critical to success. As a portfolio\n manager I continually wrestle with the temptation to forge ahead with \ndelivery and the need to ensure that the direction of travel is the \nright one. The pressure from the technical staff to \u2018crack on\u2019 is often \nsevere and they can sometimes have an aversion to what can be perceived \nas P3M bureaucracy. I accept that it\u2019s not easy but we do need to do \nmore to ensure that we understand the nature of our project foundations \nand the uncertain factors that influence a successful outcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In his latest blog, company director Martin Paver looks into the role of planning in delivering complex resources and why this is important for project delivery and performance. Author: Martin Paver Director at i3Works<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}