Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
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What do you do when you inherit a project that's better described as a mess? Start simply, asking questions that will tell you where the project is, how it got there, and who is going to help you move it forward. Then you're ready to make the project your own.
This article, excerpted from the book Herding Chickens: Innovative Techniques for Project Management (Sybex, 2004), is the fourth in an ongoing series on novel ways to approach the management of projects, featuring tips not typically taught in training and education courses.
After four days in his 1992 Toyota Celica (in which there was no air or heat) and a stop in Cawker City, Kansas, to see the world’s largest ball of twine, Mike D. and his new bride arrived in Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas Eve, 2000, where he was slated to start a new job after the first of the year. His position? A techie on the IT staff at a paper recycling plant.
In his first week his boss tasked him with upgrading the plant’s phone system, which involved new software, equipment, and lines. Ever the optimist, Mike assumed the scope of the project had been finalized before he arrived, since he was given an equipment list and a stack of purchase orders that were already issued.
Silly Mike. When he began to review the new system’s features with the employees, who wanted everything from caller ID to three-way calling and voice-over-IP, …
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