Adaptive Planning Doesn’t Solve Everything
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
I’m a big fan of continuous and adaptive planning. The evolution of the planning process from a single, annual event that establishes priorities and approves projects for up to 18 months, to an ongoing process that regularly revisits decisions and adjusts project approvals, has had a major impact on strategic performance.
Organizations are now planning and approving work much closer to when that work starts, allowing them to make more appropriate investment decisions. They are also revisiting those approvals regularly to ensure that the drivers of them are still in place, and that projects can still deliver appropriate value. The entire planning process now feels more connected to the work, and that has led to a significant improvement in everything from strategic success to project team engagement.
However, organizations cannot simply rely on continuous planning approaches; they aren’t the solution to everything. There are still a lot of scenarios where an initial approval decision represents the final opportunity to avoid mistakes or adjust approaches. You can’t suddenly decide that a bridge construction project is no longer viable once it is half built, or that changes in regulatory requirements mean that you can’t make money from the almost-complete power generation plant, so you won’t finish it.
Now, granted that these are specialist …
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
|
"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; and I am Marie of Roumania." - Dorothy Parker |
