Transitioning Paradigms

It’s become a cause of some concern as I delve deeper and deeper into the ways of project management just how much we don’t understand about projects. I realize I’m putting myself squarely on top of Mount Stupid on the Dunning-Kruger graph by going into this, but I hope it’ll be a learning experience for everyone.

Now then, we certainly know more about how projects work than we did 10 years ago. And more than 20, 30, and so on. I know some of this comes with my understanding of project management, but I feel new methodologies,?algorithms,?and patterns have arisen in the past decade that simply weren’t there before. This, of course, applies to every decade:?in the 70s we had Waterfall, in the 80s we got Lean Six Sigma,?Scrum popped its head in the 90s,?Agile took off in the early 2000s etc.

But what I feel defines a project at its core has nothing to do with these.?These are here simply to prove that we’re basically winging it a lot of the time,?trying to keep up with technology made for the future and maintain thinking cemented firmly in the past.

The three major points of a project are: Want, Need,?and Get.

And all this leads me to why I named this article “Transitioning Paradigms.”?Because in these three core elements?- applied at any level of a project - you will find a hopeful?outlook?for a great oucome, a determined drive to get there, and a?stark realization that in order to do that, you will meet a lot of people that view all three steps in completely different ways.

WANT

This one’s the foreword. Each party involved in a project is the author of their individual novel. How they think the story’s not only going to work, but how it should be perceived.?Sales are happy with the money, solution architects?are happy with the structure, project managers are happy with the prospect, operations are happy with the opportunity, the customer’s happy with…well, the customer’s rarely happy, but they’re the the ones with the check book, so don’t piss them off.

And while I’ve laid out the wants of every group?separately (and there are so many more),?you’re already thinking “hang on, don’t some?of these overlap?”?Of course they do. All the time. At almost all levels. Everybody wants an end result that they perceive without almost any information from the other groups. Communication and transparency, I’ve learned, can come rather difficult between large organizations.?So sales sees the money they’re gonna get at the end, but don’t like the costs of the transition, solution architects love their structure,?but are unhappy with the fact that it will, inevitably, change, project managers endear themselves to the prospect of a successful project, not knowing who they’ll be dealing with yet (oh, boy…), operations are stoked for the new work opportunity, but realize they’re rather helpless to change things, the customer…well, they might be unhappy all the way through (not to say that I haven’t had the pleasure of working with exceptional representatives from customers that were nothing but supportive and understanding, but that’s fairly rare).

So the want’s out the window.

NEED

Here we get down to the proverbial brass tacks.?This is where everybody figures out what’s actually needed, not just dreamt up?(except for the customer, they always need more).

This is the level at which information is finally flowing between organizations, reaching the necessary ears, setting off lightbulbs and red flags across the board. And some parts of this gargantuan machine will be better illuminated and others will be in the red almost immediately.

I’m making this too generalized. These are, after all, people that I’m talking about. And it’s people who see every project through. People who see a red flag and turn it into a lightbulb. OK,?that’s a bit too much of a stretch.?People who come up with solutions. And then there’s people who see a lot of red and panic?and revert to their cognitive safety nets.?These are the two?paradigms that will be transitioned: thinkers and panickers.

Of course, everybody is a bit of both. I doubt I’ve ever seen someone fully confident or fully lost (well, maybe the latter occasionally, including myself at one point).?This meld of bright light and dark red is what drives the rest of the project. It is here, amidst a scramble to ensure your red flag is seen, but your lightbulb also shines?bright enough as well, that the messes happen. Here, in the trenches of the?collective experience and thought of so many, things go terribly wrong.

This is where somebody (or somebodies) comes up with daily calls,?Scrum sessions,?micromanagement, finger pointing, unreasonable requests, plan changes, scope changes,?you get the point. This is where, if you’re stuck in your own way of thinking, you will cause more problems than solve. This is where thinking outside the box comes in. And it’s not some big box that people?are in. It’s your own box.

Communication starts ramping up,?as does transparency, but so,?too,?do all the nasty parts?mentioned above. Focus is lost and if you don’t have enough people willing to be flexible, the sticks won’t only be short, but they’ll be pointy as well.

GET

And so we wind down to the end of the process. The project is over and you breathe a relieved sigh, as you go over the project and try to come up with lessons learned. What went right and wrong, what could’ve been done better, and if you’re genuinely interested in what happened, many things can be ascertained. But, if you were caught up in the flags, the one thing you’ll be doing is making sure that, when auditing comes around, you’ll have someone to blame. Why? Because you stuck to your paradigm. It’s been transitioned into the project?alongside everything else.

Rarely have I heard a?resounding “yes”?from all sides to the question?“is everybody happy with how things?turned out?”?Correction: never have I heard that answer.

Hopefully, one of those that answers “yes” is the customer, but you’re still left with a lot of miffed people.?Over what? Over nothing, really, other than that everything “could have been done faster if people had just listened.”?Yeah, good luck, buddy. We’re all in that bucket.

This is what you get. A project coming to a close, with some people happier than others.

But is it enough? Should a different method have been applied? Should someone have listened or spoken more? Should a line have been drawn sooner? Was there a lack of communication or understanding? Well…everybody’s gonna have different opinions on that. I know I do.

The baseline is,?still, lessons learned. And the one lesson I’ve learned is: share responsibility?and accountability. If you don’t,?what you get is sore.

CONCLUSION

With all the project management methodologies we have at hand,?however useful they may be, we cannot predict human nature.?We?are,?in fact, quite terrible at it. And no level of scrutiny, micromanagement, power plays, escalations, what have you will ever fully prepare us for the best and worst part of project management: ourselves.