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Date
As project managers, we are all about baselining. That is – determining a reference point from which we make rational judgments. We baseline scope. We baseline schedule. We baseline the budget. We do this so that we can make informed decisions about the actuals – comparing actual to planned and looking for variance. It's from this information that we make decisions - important project decisions.
In projects, this is done in the relatively short term. Even though projects can be decades long, we must remember that in the scheme of things, a 50-year project is – geologically speaking – a flash in the pan, if that. And that’s where the forams come in.
Forams? That's not a typo - we didn't mean forum. Although, there may be a forum for forams.
So - what’s a foram? They are simple marsh-dwelling creatures – technically called foraminifera, which are choosy about how much time they spend underwater, and so they turn out to be surprisingly precise indicators of ancient sea levels. Here's a picture of some...
In this article from today’s Boston Globe, you’d find the story of Professor Andrew Kemp of Tufts University, who is studying the ancient climate, “using lessons written in the sediment to discern historical patterns that could help refine models of climate change and sea levels. Generally, local sea level rise is calculated by taking the overall changes predicted by climate models and then factoring in the local conditions. But those are complex and aren’t all understood — a knowledge gap that research like Kemp’s could help fill.”
In other words, they are baselining.
The studies being conducted by Kemp have taken him from North Carolina to Long Island Sound, and now he would like to extend that work to Massachusetts, to build a fine-grained portrait of how sea levels have changed over the last several thousand years in order to make more informed predictions.
We found this story to be interesting in the dual connection to project management: first, the baseline element and second, the fact that it is indeed a project – one that our book Green Project Management would call a “Green By Definition” project.
And there was another, perhaps even stronger connection.
We’ve always treasured one particular aspect of project management – the fact that we are silo-busters. Read this quote from the article:
‘The work shows the importance in science of borrowing tools and insights from other fields. While biologists might be interested in forams and the ecosystems in which they live for their own right, geologists can use the different species of forams they find and their distribution in the sediment to extrapolate the conditions of the ancient marsh.”
Even within the field of science – there are clearly silos. And it’s this project team that is breaking down the walls between those silos to gain a positive outcome. That’s what projects are all about.
And you can use that line… as a baseline.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: November 10, 2014 09:35 PM |
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