What Color Is An Orange?

 

Pretty simple question, right? What color is an orange? Since it’s such a simple question, and since I’m the one asking, my regular readers are perfectly justified in suspecting a trap. Can I, in 700 words, convince you of an answer different from the obvious one? We’ll see.

Due to minute variations in the way humans are made up chemically, biologists have discovered that virtually everybody experiences sensory inputs slightly differently. Salt probably tastes pretty much the same for all of us, but it’s a rare palate that can discern a 1926 Dom Perignon from a 1959 vintage. And even some experts in music can have a difficult time telling the difference between a Primavera (the violin maker) and a Stradivarius in the hands of a sufficiently talented player.

This phenomena extends to our perception of color, as well. Technically, what we perceive as “color” is actually the different wavelengths of radiation in what humans know as the visual spectrum (as opposed to whose perception? Stay with me.), situated in between near-infrared (on the low side) and near-ultraviolet. Humans have three types of color-receptive cones: green, blue, and red, the last of which enables us to see all the colors that are derived from red, such as violet, and, yes, orange. By contrast, butterflies have five types of receptor cones, which means that they see at least two more colors than we humans even have names for. Mantis shrimp have 16 different types of cones(1) .

Meanwhile, back in the Project Management world, roving bands of PM-themed writers, consultants, and bloggers prowl about the land, seeking to uncover project management practices that don’t meet their ideas of sufficiency. Where do these ideas of sufficiency come from? I would argue that, with few exceptions, they come predominantly from one source: experience. For those readers who would object by saying that education also comes in to play, I would argue that “education” is rarely more than others’ experience, communicated to and adapted by the writer/consultant/blogger. In the management sciences, theories that would otherwise overturn commonly shared experiences are almost never provable in an experimental setting. When we talk about project management best practices, it’s virtually always based on experience – our own, or others’ (whom we know about). 

Okay, so if it’s a common experience that, just as the orange fruit is orange in color, any major project would be doing Project Management wrong if there were, say, no recurring “bottoms-up” estimate being performed, why is it problematic to point that out? Because it’s subjective, that’s why. 

If the question as to whether or not an object is orange is mission-critical, then the appropriate response would be something like “Its wavelength is between 635 and 590 nanometers, which most people perceive as the color orange.” Similarly, if a writer, consultant, or auditor wants to level severe criticism against a project team for not executing the occasional “bottoms-up” estimate, the natural response should be “Why? Why is re-re-estimating the remaining work considered a valid analysis technique? Which projects have had success in doing that way, as opposed to the normal, calculated version?” But, since there is no valid research establishing that performing a “bottoms-up” estimate yields vital performance information that often changes the project team’s technical approach for the better, the one making the criticism remains mired in subjectivity. At that point, the argument turns on the differences in the participants’ experience. But, as we established earlier, our experiences are almost certainly subjective and unique – even those from virtually identical backgrounds can and do have significantly different takes on their shared experiences, up to and including causality.

So, what color is an orange? Well, I’ll concede it’s orange – if and only if disagreement doesn’t land me or my project team in the non-compliance penalty box. Otherwise, I’m going to have to insist on a spectrometer analysis…

  (1)The Oatmeal, “Why the Mantis Shrimp is my New Favorite Animal,” retrieved from http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp on November 5, 2015, 18:06 MST.