Ambiguity Personas (Part 4): Diane the Driver
Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.
My focus in this series is not only about ambiguity, but about how people respond to ambiguity and impact themselves and those around them. Those impacted could be colleagues, family or friends. As a leader, your ability to bring clarity to chaos is one of the single most important skills you can possess. So far, we’ve looked at three personas:.
- Part 1 introduced Aaron the Avoider
- Part 2 introduced Brett the Broadcaster
- Part 3 introduced Cal the Complicator
Now we meet Diane the Driver.
Diane was a seasoned PM known for her discipline to keep project teams and stakeholders focused through successful completion. Her latest project was to implement a new company-wide HR system. Dave was a new hire and was staffed on the project as a product manager.
Dave did a great job of building relationships with the business users. Diane was under mandate to hold the schedule firm, which meant she had to keep scope to plan of record to ensure she met her date. Everything was going well into user acceptance testing. During UAT, Jeff, one of the business users raised two “small” enhancements that were previously deemed as out of scope with Dave.
“We’re crushing it on schedule, and these changes are very small. Can’t we just squeeze them in?” Jeff pleaded his case to Dave.
Dave, wanting to please Jeff, went directly to one of …
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If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure. - Dan Quayle |
