Don't Ignore The Known Elephant!

In February 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Secretary of State for Defence, stated at a Defence Department briefing:

"There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."

Many people thought this statement was nonsense and, on the surface, it appears to be. However, having a careful look at what Rumsfeld said reveals that it does actually make sense and never more so than in the world of IT project management.

To successfully deliver an IT project, as the project manager you need to know how to cater for both the knowns and unknowns you will encounter.

In project delivery, Rumsfeld's “known knowns” (i.e. the things we do know about) become the Scope and the Constraints of our project - we allow for these during our planning process.

The “known unknowns” are the Assumptions and Risks.  Assumptions we know about, but we don’t know for sure they will occur and Risks we know about, but we may not know the likelihood of them occurring or the severity of their impact on our project.

This leaves us with the “unknown unknowns”. Things we don’t know that we don’t know?  As a project manager, how do we plan for what we don’t know?  This is where project contingency comes into your planning – you need to build a contingency for time, scope and budget to allow for these “unknown unknowns” and hope that this contingency is sufficient to meet and defeat the “unknowns”, if and when they occur.

It is easy to blame the “unknown unknowns” for any project failure, however it is not unusual for a project to fail because of things we knew about already - the “known unknowns”, but we chose to ignore.

I will use the metaphor of an elephant in the room to try and explain some of the reasons why we ignore these known risks, despite them being obvious and in some cases being captured by your project team before you even commence your project.

1. We let sleeping elephants lie - This is a situation in which stakeholders are aware of the risk, but don’t do anything about it in the hope that it will not occur. Consequently, they have no idea how to handle it if it does.
2. But it’s not my elephant - This is a situation where no one is willing to take responsibility for owning and managing the risk. It simply gets passed around until it is eventually given to someone who is reluctant to do anything about actually resolving it.
3. Nah, the elephant isn’t really there - This is often a case of collective blindness to a risk that everyone knows is there, but wilfully chooses to ignore.  No one acknowledges the risk, perhaps because to acknowledge it may mean that they get handed responsibility for it.
4. Wow, this elephant has powerful friends - This is a situation where a senior project stakeholder or group of stakeholders actually increases the likelihood of a risk through making a bad decision. A common example of this is when deadlines based on fantasy and not fact are imposed on the project by stakeholders.
5. Stay quiet and the elephant will just leave - This is where the team assumes that the risk will magically disappear of its own accord and is quite common in some organisations and project teams.
6. Maybe it’s not really an elephant – In these situations a risk can be incorrectly seen as something else, such as an opportunity. For example, introducing a new project methodology for the first time could be seen by some team members as an opportunity, when in reality it is more likely a risk to the project’s success.
7. Yay, the elephant is dead – If when asked about the status of a risk, the response is “that it is no longer a problem,” chances are the elephant is just sleeping and not actually dead.

“Known Unknowns” that are ignored can be the metaphorical elephant in the room and although they can be easy to ignore, if they eventuate, they can run amok and wreak havoc on your project.

An effective risk management process is about handling these elephants, and should be looked at as the project manager’s ally. Done properly, it will help you make sure that the project team and the organisation's 'appetite for risk' is correctly understood; that all risks are agreed upon, prioritised, assessed, communicated and managed in alignment with this 'risk appetite'; and that your project has the means to track agreed actions, including escalation if required.

There is always the chance that "unknown unknowns" will upset your project, but the better you can assess and actively manage the "known unknowns" (risks), the better placed you will be to achieve a positive result for your project.