How anecdotes from the hit Douglas Adams books can be applied to the field of Project Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author: Emily Hawkings Project Manager at i3Works<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n 5 important lessons Project Managers can learn from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Using your Babel Fish<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Surprisingly this term comes up a lot in the defence industry. In the\n books the Babel fish is a small yellow fish that once inserted into the\n ear enables you to understand anything said to you in any form of \nlanguage. P3M, MOD and HMG are heavily acronymic industries, overlaid \nwith a language specific to the sector or the profession. Without an \nunderstanding of this it becomes extremely difficult to converse with \nyour peers or the client – so until our fish start evolving telepathic \nlanguage powers, we need to invest effort in learning the terminology. \nWe also need to concentrate on simpler ways to ensure all consultants \nare speaking the same language, aligned across the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Surviving Vogon poetry<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Vogon poetry is described by the guide as the third worst poetry in \nthe universe and used as a form of torture. Presented with a choice of \nbeing thrown into the vacuum of space or telling the Vogon what they \nthought of his poem, one of the main characters took a completely new \napproach to this torturous situation by brightly saying \u2018\u2026Actually I \nquite liked it\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two lessons for the P3M community:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Avoiding the Hitchhiker\u2019s \u2018Management Consultant\u2019 stigma<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Management consultants were grouped in the books alongside telephone \nsanitisers and other perceived ineffectual professions and when they \ncrash land on-board the doomed Golgfrinchan Arc B in prehistoric times \nthe first thing they do is create fiscal policy – \u201cSince we decided\n a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, \nall become immensely rich. But we have also,\u201d continued the management \nconsultant, \u201crun into a small inflation problem on account of the high \nlevel of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current \ngoing rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship\u2019s \npeanut.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s important for us as project professionals to ensure we have the \nproject fundamentals in place and grounded in the reality of the project\n and delivery environment. Scope, outcomes, key milestones; we need to \nget the basic building blocks in place before getting down to the \ndetail- and ultimately realign the perceptions of the value that a \nconsultant project professional can deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Project visibility and the visibility of plans. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut the plans were on display\u2026\u201d Has this ever sounded familiar? I\u2019ve heard of projects where there \nis a culture to leave the contract in the drawer because its only needed\n when things go wrong. But when this applies to the schedule it becomes a\n little disconcerting. Sometimes project managers can become \n\u2018gatekeepers\u2019 of the schedule leaving sponsors unaware that the project \nis no longer on track until it is too late to redirect effort (West, C.K\n ProjectInsight.net). Whether the schedule is a handrail or the \nfoundation of EVM, it needs to be front and centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. The dangers of the \u2018total perspective vortex\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018 <\/em>When you are put into the Vortex you are given just \none momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, \nand somewhere in it there’s a tiny little speck, a microscopic dot on a \nmicroscopic dot, which says, “You are here.”\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Whilst you may think that seeing the big picture is a good thing in a\n project (it certainly helps benefit realisation in programmes or \nportfolios), in some cases you lose focus if you consider aspects that \nare outside of the project scope. Yes, there are external influencers \nand dependencies that are important and need to be monitored but you \nwill not manage effectively if you try and control everything \u2013 as the \nguide says “In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n It turns out even the most unlikely sources can teach us something \nabout ourselves and how we can progress in our industry. Inspiration and\n similarities to your work can be found anywhere\u2026 or maybe that\u2019s just \nthe infinite improbability drive at work\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n References<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cOn display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the display department.\u201d
\n\u201cWith a flashlight.\u201d
\n\u201cAh, well, the lights had probably gone.\u201d
\n\u201cSo had the stairs.\u201d
\n\u201cBut look, you found the notice, didn\u2019t you?\u201d
\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Arthur, \u201cyes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a \nlocked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the \ndoor saying \u2018Beware of the Leopard.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n