Critical Thinking - The Missing Element in Project Management Processes
Glen Alleman MSSM
Applying Systems Engineering Principles, Processes & Practices to Increase Probability of Program Success for Complex System of Systems, in Aerospace & Defense, Enterprise IT, and Process and Safety Industries
Complex and unstable environments encountered in project work - especially software development project work - call for critical thinking by all participants. Complexity comes in part from technical uncertainties, starting with requirements for software capabilities. If there is uncertainty about what capabilities are needed, the project begins on the path to failure on day one. Indeed, the functional and operational requirements have emergent properties that create uncertainty, as do staffing, productivity, and risks created by reducible and irreducible uncertainty.
The project leaders and participants need critical thinking to deal with these complexities. And this?critical thinking?starts with defining the Capabilities needed to accomplish the mission or fulfill the Strategy, with their Measures of Effectiveness (MOE), Measures of Performance (MOP), and Key Performance Parameters (KPP), and Technical Performance Measures (TPM).
ONLY then can the requirements be defined, and have a reason for being there.
The first responsibility of the project staff, as well as management, is to think. To think what is being asked of them. They should consider that they are being paid to produce value by someone other than themselves. They should think about why?they are there,?what?they are being asked to do, and?how?they can be stewards of the money provided by those paying for their work.?To be true professionals, they apply their education, training, and experience through analysis and creative, informed thought to make daily decisions.
Failure to apply critical thinking creates a disconnect between those providing the value and those paying for the value. This is best illustrated in the notion that business decisions can be made without knowing the cost and outcomes of those decisions. The first gap in critical thinking occurs when the decision-making process ignores the principles of MicroEconomics. This gap is reinforced when the probabilistic nature of all project work is also ignored.?
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The three core elements of all projects are the delivered capabilities, the cost of producing those capabilities, and the time frame over which those capabilities are offered for the price. Each acts as a random variable, interacting with the other two in statistically complex ways.
Managing these random variables means making decisions in the presence of uncertainties—and resulting risks—created by the?variables' randomness. These uncertainties are reducible—we can pay more to find out more information. Or they are irreducible; we can only manage in their presence with?margin for cost, schedule, and technical performance.
To make decisions in the presence of this paradigm, we need to Estimate. Making decisions without estimating violates the principles of microeconomics and ignores the underlying statistical and probabilistic nature of all project work.
When we hear that decisions should be made without estimates, we should ask how Microeconomics and statistical uncertainty can be handled.?
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1 周I've written a book on what I call three-step project management. It addresses the problems I see in project management and the issues that are present in the current systems. I will put it on Amazon and set a course on Udemy. I am just a guy, but I hope somebody reads it because our current systems are just a wreck.?I've been retired for 10 years now, but I still have many friends Who are project managers, and I talk to them all the time, so I know what's happening. Things seem to be just getting worse.
Project Controls for Interesting Projects - Canada/EU/Africa/Asia, Construction, Power to X, Minerals and Metals, Power, Infrastructure, Data Analysis, M.Sc.ME, SCS, SE, EV, Multilingual portfolio
2 周The problem starts with the education system in the middle school and maybe even earlier.
Executive Director of NimblePM,Inc
2 周Glen, Thank you for writing this. It is clear and to the point. Unfortunately, it's a hard message for people to internalize. As I read your advice I kept seeing circles. The center circle is "All I'm paid to do" and the surrounding circles are all labeled "somebody else's responsibility" Another word for critical thinking is "independent thinking", i.e. considering specific risks and possible outcomes that management might not be happy with. One of my favorite stories is of a project manager who realized that if they brought a software system online as architected, it would take about 10 minutes for hackers to find it and expose everyone's social security numbers. Management insisted he stick to the schedule. It was immediately hacked. Needless to say he took the blame. Management needs to make critical thinking possible by encouraging it. That means listening and acting on advice they don't want to hear. I know it's possible because I've worked in companies that did that and I always felt, not only safe to bring bad news, but more importantly, to get out in front of the bad news by changing what we did on the project.
Climate Action, Climate Justice
2 周Terrific post. I'd move the graphic up near the top though, as it helps guide the discussion.