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.

Project management resources from Tasmania

Tasmania is an archipelago comprising more than 300 islands situated about 250 Km south of the Australian continent, from which is separated by the Bass Strait. The main island is named Tasmania after Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who reported its existence on 1642. 

It is a sovereign state and counts nowadays more or less half a million inhabitants.

These are all well known facts but there is something peculiar that maybe not everyone knows.

Tasmanian government on its own created a project management framework named Tasmanian Government Project Management Framework, comprised of the Tasmanian Government Project Management Guidelines and many supporting resources. I have come to know this attending an amazing presentation given by Sean Whitaker at the last Project Management Institute Global Congress in Vancouver.

This framework has been realized to be a guideline for every Tasmanian government agency and it is freely consultable from here, the official Tasmanian government web site.

Resources that can be found are

• Mailing list. It was meant to be a way for sharing project management ideas between Tasmanian government employees. However to facilitate collaborations between public and private sectors subscription is not subjected to any restriction.
• Framework documentation and generic project management tips.
• Templates for generic project management activities related documents. 
• Checklists to assess project characteristics or the degree best practices are being implemented.

All materials is organized in sections

Getting started in project management
This section provides informations and resources on basic project management topics, to help everyone get started in basic project management activities.

Project life
This section provides informations and resources to help managing projects, organized in a kind of project life cycle. We can find here tutorials and templates to organize the project, create Gantt charts, create WBS, report the project status,...

Project management guidelines
This section describes how to manage a project following the Tasmanian government framework, identifing and explaining all the included key processes. This document is realeased under the creativecommons Attribution 3.0 Australia license.

Supporting resources
This section contains resources to help project managers to set up and manage projects like fact sheets, templates toolkits...

Project Management advisory committee
This section contains the meaning and the pourpose of the tasmanian government project management advisort committee (PMAC for short).

Further information

This section mainly contains examples and presentations.

As I said all the material is freely consultable from the internet and I have proposed it in this post as a source of information and for self-learning pourpose. If anyone is interested in downloading part of the material here presented and using it to manage his/her own project, I recommend to ask for permission following one of the many information links provided by the Tasmanian government on its official web site.

These resources could be very useful for someone who is taking his/her first steps in the project management world, as it essentially covers basic project management principles and activities.
Nonetheless I think that even an experienced project manager could get some benefit. 

Who knows where the next good idea or tip will come from ?

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

Is life a bad chartered project ?

Once a friend of mine told me "Life is strange. Usually when you have the necessary introspection capability to make a choice, you discover that it is too late. Either you have already taken the wrong decision years ago and the chips are down now, or you have to drastically reduce your expectations and targets. This happens many times and in many ways."
I totally agree.
For example you have to choose which degree apply for when you have little idea of what you would like to do in your life. You become a lawyer and maybe you would have been more happy as a doctor.You will discover it...that's sure...but it will be too late.
Maybe one day you wake up and say out of the blue "Here I am...I want absolutely learn how to play jazz guitar...I will play in a band...I will...". But then you realize that you are 40 years old, with a full time job and 2 kids to play with. You still can learn jazz guitar...but you probably will end up playing "Autumn Leaves" or "Blue Bossa" alone in your basement, late at night, without having any clue on how to play a decent solo.
Doesn't this ring you any bell? Isn't this the same situation you will find yourself stuck into when you are managing a badly chartered project? Isn't this what you get when you realize to have put too little an effort in writing a project charter, either because you couldn't or because just you wouldn't ?

In a badly chartered project you will come at a point where the product you deliver is not what it should have been, when there is no more way to satisfy requirements or hit objectives. You can be sure of this.
Or, if you are lucky enough, you will come at a point where you have to dramatically review objectives and savagely cut scope, time, costs, quality...or all of them.

The result doesn't change...a failure.
Maybe you will succeed in make the sponsors and the clients buy in your deliverables...but they won't be properly satisfied and at the bottom of your heart you will feel that you have failed in some way.
So when you are taking up a project be careful to understand what is in the charter and what it is not and that both things be understood by the sponsor and key stakeholders.
This is a good rule of thumb even you are helping chartering the project.
So what do we hope to find in a solid project charter?
Well...many things...there is no silver bullet in this game...but if I had to write a list I would recommend at least

• A detailed project description, including high level objectives and requirements. Sometimes stating what it doesn't belong to the project is as valuable as writing what it is a part of it.
• Solid and well explained business case. This automatically define your options when it is time for change and/or control. If you know what is at stake you can choose which project constraints optimize at expenses of others. Moreover if the business case expires it is right that the project dies.
• Most important constraints (time, budget, quality, ...). Also these informations help you in revising your options when it comes the time to change. 
• How project objectives contribute to company objectives. This shows the value of your project as perceived by your company and the strength and the effort you will be allowed to profuse in your quest for success.
• High level project risks. 
• High level stakeholders. If you don't know by now who will be most influenced by the outcomes of your project or can influence the results in a massive way you will be rushing headlong toward disaster.
• High level deliverables. If you don't know what you will be asked to deliver how would you possibly deliver it ?
• Project manager authority. What are you in charge of ? You must know what you are entitled to do, which actions, countermeasures and decisions you can take and which you cannot take.
• Time horizon of the project. 

If you cannot states all these informations at least at a very high level...well...it probably means that you don't have the necessary insight  into the project to charter it in an effective way.
If you can't describe it you can't project it and if you can't project it...it simply means that you can't do it.

So take your time and try to analyze every aspect of your project before finalizing the project charter, because it is the foundations over which your project will be build and because once released, you and your team will be committed to it. 

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