Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Lessons In Leverage
David Schmaltz is a project manager in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Many project managers, well trained as problem solvers, engage like hammers looking for nails. But there are options, starting with a realization that so-called inherent project management problems -- responsibility without authority, indifferent sponsors -- need not be nails in your project's coffin. In fact, they can be leveraged. Here's an alternative perspective on some traditional complaints.
"The Problem With Projects" [October 7, 2004] drew some unconstructive conclusions from a survey of practicing project managers and team members. The article focused on what "senior management needs to do to dramatically improve project success rates," while ignoring those things that project managers can do without anyone else’s permission to dramatically improve their project success.
How might the same survey data be interpreted differently so that a pragmatic, practicing project manager might find some real leverage for improving their project success rates? I do not intend to trivialize the difficulties facing projects. The difficulties are real and can be resolved only if they are fully acknowledged. But acknowledgment can stymie resolution unless difficulties are properly interpreted. Let’s see how a different reading of the survey’s results might change these eternal difficulties into more easily resolvable forms.
&…
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it. - Theodore Roosevelt |