Pushmi-Pullyu

 

Pushmi-Pullyu (plural Pushmi-Pullyus) is a fictional animal, with two heads at opposing ends of its body, in Hugh Lofting's "The Story of Doctor Dolittle". I am sure all of us had encountered our version of pushmi-pullyus from time to time in the projects that we are managing or have managed. They appeared in different outfits like the demanding sponsor that told you "I want this fast and now" but on the other hand, squeezed thousands of nice-to-have features into the scope, or the clueless user that insisted to have a fast loading page but choked it with bunch of irrelevant charts and images. Have you identified the pushmi-pullyus in your projects? How should you handle their contradicting demands?

Now, let's take a step back and ask ourselves if contradicting demands are really bad? Can they coexist? How can we satisfy opposing demands without having any costly tradeoffs? Is it possible for us to constructively manage the tensions of opposing demands and creatively resolve the tensions thereby, turning challenges into new opportunities? Well, it turns out that we might be able to address this through integrative thinking. Integrative thinking is a discipline and methodology originated by Roger Martin for solving complex and opposing problems. It encourages people to consider broadly, embrace different ideas, think holistically and seek for creative resolutions. This involves going through four basic steps of Salience, Causality, Architecture and Resolution when solving any problem or making any decision. If applied well, integrative thinking may help you to turn a seemingly impossible demand in your project to a well-received deliverable. For example, you may use Moscow method to classify the features requested by the sponsor into must-have, should-have, could-have and won't-have and prioritize them to be delivered over a couple of phases. Doing so allows you to accommodate all the features requested by the demanding sponsor while at the same time able to deliver a workable solution in a short period of time. Are you ready to tame your pushmi-pullyu?