Experiment For Your Project Survival
14. Feb, 2009 
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What is killing thousands of projects per week?
The fact that we have no clue what is happening in our project and its environment, and still act as if we have paranormal gifts that allow us to predict the future. We are too stupid to understand reality. So, there I said it. Again.
But what can we do? If we cannot create a Gantt chart, what is there left?
Photography by Ctd 2005.
Create your bloody chart. It’s not that piece of paper that is the problem. It is you for thinking reality will simply follow it. It’s just a communication tool, for crying out loud. Just a piece of reflection. Not some holy relic.
It’s OK to admit you are also human. Don’t be ashamed if you don’t know how certain tasks will end up. Just try things. Experiment. Wing it. Trial and error. Just do it. And look what happens. Does it bring you in the right direction? If so, do more of it. If not, try something else.
The solution is so simple. But somehow, “experimenting” lost its appeal. Management (with a capital “M”) doesn’t allow uncertainties. The whole quality hype didn’t help us either, with its “zero defects” and “doing it right the first time” crap. It just means we should think before we do something. It doesn’t mean we should kill everyone that needs a second attempt!
Heck, even Frederick Brooks wrote in his classic The Mythical Man Month “the management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that.” His advice? Plan to throw one away.
No, this doesn’t mean just shooting from the hip. This means careful consideration of which experiments to perform and closely monitor the results with all metrics you have at your project management disposal. This is just normal software PM. Prototypes, proof of concepts, every iteration is a new experiment that brings you either closer to the end result or helps you adjust your path towards the desired result.
We are already doing it. But somehow we cannot call it “experimenting.” We call it “iterative,” “evaluating alternatives,” “generating options” and so forth.
Experimenting, evaluating new paths and alternatives, is a way complex systems adapt to changing environments. As Buzz Holling, the man who brought us Panarchy, explains:
“The only way to approach such a period, in which uncertainty is very large and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living.”
For a different, down to earth explanation, watch this short clip from videoblogger Gary Vaynerchuk: “Reactionary business. Why predict the future?”
It is all about the same.
EXPERIMENT!
In short, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
“The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency, or change. That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence. No one can deny this truth, and all the teaching of Buddhism is condensed within it. … This is also called the teaching of Nirvana. When we realize the everlasting truth of “everything changes” and find our composure within it, we find ourselves in Nirvana.”
- Shunryu Suzuki
“How can we create when we're clinging and grasping, and full of anxiety? We don't need to have a complete and rigid idea of what we'll be doing next week or next year, because if we get rigidly attached to that idea, then we shut out a whole range of possibilities.”
- Deepak Chopra
I don't think that experimenting lost their appeal. Sometimes management encourage people to do prototypes when there's much uncertainty in the place and it always has been so. On the other hand there are, and there always were, organizations where you need to bring hard estimates to the table no matter if you talk about a project you've implemented dozen times or a new R&D effort you know nothing about.
It's so very often a people problem as most of issues we see in our job. As far as you see support from your management to experiment or to prototype whenever it's reasonable and needed you're on a good position. Of course there are some people who'd like to experiment all the time which is even worse than no experimenting at all but that's management role to limit it to reasonable level.
Hi Pawel, you are absolutely correct on this one.. “people” problems. It's not about the concept itself, it's what people do (or do not) with it. Experimenting is a valid approach towards uncertainty. But socially it's not (always) the dominant smart thing to “think”.
I guess it depends of the context you work in how “dominant” this thinking is
Thanks for your contribution.
My thoughts on crashing projects http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njKMX_6bctg
WOW Andrew! Very interesting stuff (and well done)… what if aviation crew resource management were applied to software projects? great idea.
Interesting what you can do in 90 min with Powerpoint (with Cool Iris add-in) and Picasa3.
Different kind of improvised explosive device.
Basically it expresses my feeling that it is people who crash projects. So why do we keep focusing on processes & technology to address this issue?
For those who like complex adaptive systems: this concept of experimenting has everything to do with fitness landscapes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_landscape). You can view the landcape as a 3d view, with xy axes as a position for variables (describing your situation), the z axers denotes the level of fitness for survival. So, higher peaks have a higher level of fitness.
Within a fitness landscape you are trying to look for the optimal solution. However, you don't have the overview of the entire landscape, so you can only look for local maxima (local peaks). But how do you know you are on a peak? You have to move around a little to see if you go up or go down. You need to try different variables in the landscape, you need to experiment.