The PM Terminator: “Ahll Be Bach”

 

Continuing with ProjectManagement.com’s June theme of technology, I feel the need to stick with my contrarian position, since most of the time advances in technology, be it in materials science, construction methods, or information systems are met with enthusiastic acceptance. However, if the large volume of horror-laced science fiction films and novels have taught us anything, it’s that carelessly or recklessly advanced technology can have terrifying outcomes. While careless or reckless advances in Project Management technology probably won’t threaten mass extinctions or the entire population of the Earth becoming enslaved to supercomputers and their robot minions, PM advances do carry the threat of being soul-crushingly boring and terrifyingly irksome. To paraphrase Kyle Reese, “Listen. Understand. Those technology-enhanced PM experts are out there. They can't be reasoned with, they can't be bargained with...they don't feel pity or remorse or fear...and they absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you do PM the way they want.”

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

“But Michael!” I can hear GTIM Nation exclaim, “What possible nightmare scenarios can come about from advances in PM technology?” Well, I can imagine a few, including:

• Absurdly tight and mis-applied Variance Analysis Thresholds.  As commercial off-the-shelf Critical Path and Earned Value Methodology software platforms become more capable of sharing data with other systems such as the general ledger, the dopey analysis of comparing budgets to actual costs at the line-item level will become easier to do. The whole point of a Variance Analysis Threshold (VAT) is to acknowledge that some noise exists in the raw project performance data, and to avoid raising an alarm when, in fact, no performance issue is occurring. For example, a typical research Work Package (WP) will have the following weighted milestones:
  • 15% done when the initial investigation/data pull is complete.
  • 40% of the budget is claimed when the first draft of the findings report is done.
  • 65% has been attained when the second draft of the findings report is complete.
  • 85% claimed when the report is shipped off to the customer, and
  • 100% of the budget is claimed as earned when the customer approves the report.

How did I know that the completion of the second draft was worth precisely 65%? I didn’t. It’s just an approximation that tends to reflect actual performance on these kinds of WPs. What if the exact percentage were to be 59.4, in this specific instance? Well, it’s okay, since there are no VATs set as low as 5.4% (not by adults, anyway). The system is set up to acknowledge a certain amount of imprecision in EVM and CPM performance assessment claims, and compensates for them. But not if this compare-actuals-to-budget business keeps going, no siree! The technology will allow for immediate and accurate appraisals of each and every instance, not of a Cost Variance, but of a spend variance, which is very different and very irrelevant. Before you know it, the PMs will have to fill out Variance Analysis Reports on why they bought a bottle of Dr. Pepper when the spend plan clearly called for a can of Coca-Cola. For those who think I’m exaggerating, keep your ears open during your next project review. Yeah, I’m exaggerating, but not by much.

• The Time-Phased Estimate to Complete.  This particular piece of analytical technology is truly pushing the envelope of management science irrelevance. As I’ve often noted in previous blogs, the Estimate at Completion (EAC) is an extremely valuable piece of project performance information, but it’s easy to accurately calculate. Unable to accept this information gem at face value, many self-identified experts call for a bottoms-up estimate of the remaining project work, an Estimate to Complete, to be created, and performance measured against it. This turns the original baseline to rubber, and had been previously considered a practice pathology to be avoided. What happens to the original baseline once a bottoms-up ETC has been produced? Surely the ETC has incorporated more recent data and circumstances that could not have been foreseen at the project’s start, so we should go with the ETC, right? But if the original baseline ought not to be turned to rubber, why do the ETC in the first place? Simply because advances in PM information system technology allows for the generation of these time-phased ETCs? If that’s the case, then what happens next month, when the system delivers another time-phased ETC? Will it be used instead of last month’s ETC, or even the original baseline? What about the ETC after that? Before you know it, the Project Office will be hip-deep in rubber baselines, with their adherents bickering about whose should be considered more accurate or authoritative.
• Broader Risk Management Plans. As the technology allows more excessive cross-hatching of basic project budget, earned, and actual costs data, risk management software will have a field day with its enhanced ability to slather irrelevant Gaussian curve-based comparisons onto the real performance data. The most insipid weapon here is the “I told you so” bomb, which works like this: the risk analysis delivers a stochastic range of bad things that might happen to which activities within the baseline. If any of those things actually happen, the risk managers will be in a position to say “See, I told you so!”, providing a veneer of legitimacy to their entirely irksome approach. Those impacted by the blast, heat, and shock of the I Told You So Bomb won’t even know it until after the unfortunate occurrence risk event actually happened, and the risk managers come along afterwards and say … (you know).

Yes, science fiction is full of horror stories of technology gone wrong, and the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence make it easy to imagine terrifying outcomes. But PM isn’t all that different. Imagine a younger Arnold Schwarzenegger coming to your project review, his glowing red killer robot eyes obscured behind sunglasses, saying in his German accent and droll delivery style “You spent $105.40 on a part that appears in your basis of estimate as costing $100. Hasta la vista, baby!”

Also, just by the way, The Terminator came back in time from 2029, which is only 10 ½ years away.