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by Richard Maltzman,
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Date
Blogger's Note: There is indeed a Part 2 coming to "A Complex, Swirling Mess". But in the interim, I thought I would share this interesting and mildly-related post.
Here's a trivia question for you:
What is it that indirectly contributes US$23 billion (that's with a "b") to the US economy?
- Hint: it uses echolocation (sonar)
- Hint: it uses echolocation to find prey
- Hint: it is a mammal
- Hint: the prey is typically insects
- Hint: it flies... as... in the air
- Hint: the name of the animal can be used as American English adjective for 'crazy'
Got it?
Yes, it's a bat. Bats help keep plant-eating insects under control by preying on such bugs and also by hunting down bugs that, in turn, prey on pollinator insects. In short, without them, a natural form of pest-control goes away, and farmers suffer huge losses.
Now, let's apply some of our project management fundamental knowledge.
To bake a cake, we need to procure the ingredients. We need a recipe. Those in hand, we can mix the ingredients per the recipe and form a batter. We then can pour that batter into a pan and put it into a pre-heated oven. Once baked, we can take it out of the oven, let it cool, and apply frosting. Can we do this in a different order, or can we do these tasks all in parallel? No. There are dependencies.
I can't speed things up by frosting the cake before the baking is done. I can't mix the ingredients until I have them. The dependencies define the 'logic' of our schedule and provide a true end-time for the cake being ready to deliver. Without the dependencies, the entire schedule goes... well, it goes batty.
So that takes us back to the bats. It turns out that very recent research (Scientific American, Volume 318, Number 5, May 2018) indicates that, possibly because of a warming climate, bats are showing up much earlier than they did as little as 20 years ago, at cave locations where the bats spend the summer consuming crop-eating insects. The bats in question travel from Mexico to a cave near San Antonio, Texas.
The schedule - the natural schedule - calls for the bats to arrive in time for their meal. But now, the system is 'out of sync'. It would be equivalent to us putting the raw ingredients in the oven without mixing them, or trying to frost the batter and then baking the cake.
The study referred to in the article was done by the Rothamsted Research laboratory and used data from about 160 US weather stations to analyze activity of these bats from 1995 through 2017.
A separate study in Indiana which was published last year also found that temperature variations affected arrival and departure times of the migrations of bats - another indication of dependency on temperature. A full-fledged connection to climate change is yet to be made, but there's certainly a suggested link since there is also a corresponding rise in temperatures during this period.
Bats exiting Bracken Cave near San Antonio
I recommend a visit to this site which has the report from the Rothamsted researchers. I also recommend holding off on frosting that cake until you have taken it out of the oven and let it cool down.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: April 23, 2018 11:44 PM |
Permalink
Comments (9)
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Thanks Richard. Climate change is a hot topic, and even us skeptics can still learn something from these articles.
@Sante, thank you. For this story, there is learning to be had even with no connection to climate change. Still of interest (IMHO) is the relationship/dependencies between temperature changes (whatever the cause) and bats, then the bats and the insects, the insects and other insects, and the insects with the crops, and the crops with the farmers, and the farmers' delivered goods (or the lack thereof) and us as consumers...and project managers!
Good article!! Helps us realize that the real project management from up above is so perfect and we continue to learn so much from that by just observing
Paul Boudreau
President| Stonemeadow Consulting
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
Interesting. I am still pushing for the addition of environmental responsibility to the PM code of ethics or in PMBOK® somewhere.
William Meller
IT Project, Program & Portfolio Manager| Polestar
Gothenburg, Sweden
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing
Vincent Guerard
Coach - Trainer - Speaker - Advisor| Freelance
Mont-Royal, Quebec, Canada
Richard, we can make parallel to project. It is like an activity is late, and the following sub shows up for work.
And for the climate change, it goes various ways, in Greenland, seems deer have not adjusted they schedule so the crop is more advanced than required by newborn deer.
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