Project Data and Stakeholders Perception

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine told me he had bought a DVD, as a present for his son’s fourth birthday.

The movie plotted the story of a father, whose wife and children had been slaughtered, years before, by a mean serial killer. Years later, the only son that survived the massacre, who had in the meantime developed a severe motorial disability, was kidnapped during a school trip.

The father started a long journey to save his son, risking his life many times, helped just by a female character, affected by serious psychological disorders.

Obviously, I asked my friend if he had gone nut completely, since last time we met, a couple of weeks before.

He answered me “Why, The DVD’s title is ‘Finding Nemo’, a classic for kids”.

I started to laugh as hell. After some days, I discovered that this was a joke circulating on the internet, even if I am not able to report the source. Still, for some days, this simple joke had made me thought a lot about data and perception.

Data do not lie, or do they?

I am a project manager, but my background is engineering.
I strongly believe that analytical data cannot lie, still, I cannot find a single flaw in the opening joke. 

The presented data are genuine but, of course, something is terribly wrong. I have myself told the same joke to other people, and the result was almost always the same. Who did not already know the joke, did fall into the trap.

Data do not lie; presentations do it

Do you know the old saying “A good liar always mixes up lies with truth?” Well, I think that the best (even if the adjective “worst” would probably fit better) liars always say the truth, just they present it in such a disguise, that you are lead to misconception.

There are two faces of this problem

• Data analysis is hard and complex I have been a professional data analyst for a good part of my career, and I have personally touched the difficulty to understand, without any bias, what data are trying to tell us. It requires hard work, time, dedication, and the will to question your findings continually. Moreover, a strong mathematical background is sometimes necessary.
• Perception is always actively at work The temptation to take shortcuts, even unconsciously, is always present and strong. Why spend a lot of time crunching numbers, when it is crystal clear what we will find at the end? Why can’t we jump directly from A to D, without spend time in B and C? If I had had 1 Euro each time I have seen people failing at reaching right conclusions, out of this approach, I would be rich by now.

Take care of your message

Obviously, there will always be someone, who would try to leverage the two faces of this coin, to fraudulently achieve personal advantages. 

The problem is that, sometimes, even if you are armed with your best intentions, your messages could be, the same, misunderstood.   

When you are presenting data, in order to move people to action, as it is common in project management, you have the big responsibility to craft your message with care.

Because data, they do not lie. What deceives people are incomplete data representations, wrong analysis paths, exaggerated importance to peanuts and minimization of important concepts.

Do not let your audience connect the dots, take them by the hand, and honestly lead them through your analysis path.

Quest' opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Unported.

Assumptions and data: never get tired to question them

Let me play a little game with you, just to introduce the subject of this post.

Solve this very easy riddle. 

“Hi, 

I am a very big mammal. 

I am an herbivorous.

I have a grey thick skin.

You can find me in Africa but I have cousins in Asia.

I have been (and I am still) hunted by humans because of something that grows near my mouth.

Who am I?

If you want to meet me follow the link.”

Are you surprised?

Did you expect to meet this other African friend?

Well...you are not totally wrong...or more precisely...you are right...too.

From the data at your disposal both the answers were right. Both these animals are big herbivorous mammals with a grey thick skin. Both of them are present in Asia and have been hunted almost to extinction because of something that grows on their muzzle...and yes...nose and mouth are quite near.

Almost everyone indicates the elephant as a solution for this riddle, probably because elephants are more ubiquitous than rhinos on television, cartoons, books, tales...

What your brain does

The fact is that you have been provided with true but incomplete data and your brain automatically tried to fill the gaps in the best way it could. It tried to interpolate data where informations were lacking.

This capability is something wonderful and amazing at the same time. Your brain, starting from some provided data and past stored knowledge, suggests you answers when you have to take decisions. This same capability is what comes at your help when you have to make an educated guess about some event in the future.

I value this as one of the most important characteristics of human beings.

Take it easy

Please, do not have fear, in this specific case is not your brain that have deceived you...but the other way round...you probably have not provided him with enough time to give a well crafted answer to the riddle I proposed you.

Probably if you had waited a little, if you had just taken your time before trying to give the answer it would have come to your mind that the riddle would have been satisfied by at least two answers. The problem was that everything seemed so perfect, the data seemed so accurate, so precise that you jumped directly to your conclusion. 

This happens in day to day life and in project management too, whenever we have to deal with data and/or assumptions to take decisions.

Sometimes we trust too much the data we have been provided with or the assumptions we have accepted as true, especially when data seem so well crafted and our first answers seem to fit so magically...in this cases sometime we are driven to rush headlong to conclusions.

What we have to deal with

In Figure1 we can see a pictographic representation of a two dimensional data  space, where data and assumptions are placed using their degree of completeness and reliability. Above the yellow line we have data and assumptions more reliable than complete. This is the same situation we have faced with the riddle.

Below the yellow line we can find data and assumptions more complete than reliable.
Both situations are critical.

Figure1.

In the first situation efforts have to be made to collect more data and to refrain from giving the answer too quickly. Take your time. If it is too good to be true...probably it is not true. So try to collect fresh informations and evaluate alternatives to your decision.

In the second one efforts have to be made to verify and validate data and assumptions, discarding corrupted ones. The problem is...how do we know that our data are not reliable or our assumptions are fault? 

Well...the only answer I can offer is to never get tired to analyze, check, question and validate.

Always perform data and assumptions sanity checks, base your analysis on literature, consult with the team, consult with the stakeholders, consult with other project managers and with your project management office... Check lessons learned related to other similar projects if you can access them.

...So

Maintain these behaviors for all the project life. Never get tired to evaluate alternatives and to question and check your data and/or assumptions...or you run the risk to mistake an elephant with a rhino...or even worse...an assumption with a million dollars gamble. 

Thank you for reading.

Bye.

Quest' opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Unported.