A new baseline
From the People, Planet, Profits & Projects Blog
by Richard Maltzman,
Dave Shirley
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Dave Shirley
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Date
We have based our company on the intersection of sustainability and project management.
And we're hopeless project management professionals who for better or worse see almost everything through a PM's eyes.
Thats' why it was such a surprise this morning - I literally had to rub my eyes - when I saw what looked like an S-curve right under the top, front-page headline story of the Boston Globe. We're going to provide that graphic for you below to look at, download, and consider.
But let's start with a mini-lesson on S-curves for our more casual readers.
For this, we turn to Max Wideman's outstanding resource and glossaries of PM, where we can findthat an S-curve is:
"A display of cumulative costs, labor hours or other quantities plotted against time. The name derives from the S-like shape of the curve, flatter at the beginning and end and steeper in the middle, which is typical of most projects. The beginning represents a slow, deliberate but accelerating start, while the end represents a deceleration as the work runs out."
It all looks like this:
As a project proceeds, we track our progress against this S-curve. The planned progress is called the baseline. Changes in scope, budget, schedule - any of these must be reflected by formal integrated change control, which (as the picture above shows) involves acknowledging that change and creating a new baseline.
Great! Lovely. Now what the bleep does that have to do with the picture on the front of the Boston Globe? Well, there is a connection. Turns out, the chart is not cumulative spend of resources but rather temperature from January through December for decades (of Boston data), plotted to show the 'normal' baseline of that pattern and also to show that 2012 was the Boston's (and the USA's) warmest on record.
So although the S-shaped curve's shape was only a bit of a bizzare coincidence (it had to do with the natrural fact that temperatures in the USA go up from January to December in that particular pattern), the idea of it being a representation of an old baselie and a new baseline was actually seen properly through my tired eyes. In fact, the last line of the article sums it up well:
It was “a huge exclamation point,’’ said Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at Climatic Data Center. “This is consistent with what we would expect in a warming world.’’
So, just as we have to re-baseline a project when we face reality and acknowlege triggered risks, issues, scope change, and so on, it appears that we have to acknowledge (and we would assert act on) factual information presented to us as PMs - or in this case, folks who happen to live on Earth. We're both.
Some of the 'new-baseliney' facts from the article:
-
seven of the nation's 10 warmest years have taken place in the past years (measurements taken since 1895)
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443 weather stations in the US recorded the warmest years ever. 1 single station recorded the coolest.
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The new average temperature of 55.3 degrees F beat the former high from 1998 by a ful degree. So it's not only a new high, but a new high with a singular 'jump'.
Have a look at the graphic. Are you a project management nut like me? Do you see an S-Curve there? And...once you realize that it isn't, do you get a feeling, like we do, that this is even more ominous than a project going bust? It's more like an eco-system giving us a 'risk trigger' that something is quite wrong?
At least consider that possibility.
-
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: January 09, 2013 09:20 AM |
Permalink
Comments (3)
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 | Anonymous |
The earth is 4-5 billion years old. Are you really sure that the data on the line labelled "Normal" is really the baseline and the "ideal" temperature? Could it be that the years represented by the baseline are really a deviation below "ideal" and the climate is returning to "ideal". What do "ideal" and "normal" really mean with regard to climate anyway?
I'm actually open to concerns about the adverse effects of anthrogenic climate change, but emotional appeals based on a few data points do not impress me.
| Anonymous |
Thanks again, Kenneth. Yes, the earth is old. And (reference: dinosaurs) it's gone through a few mass extinctions in that time. We are aiming to not be one of those. Not as humans, not as PMs. I'm not sure where the concept of 'ideal' came from, it's not in our post. This isn't about ideal, it's about what appears to be a change from what's been seen since these temperatures have been measured.
We're presenting data and asking folks to consider what it might mean. We completely accept the fact that it may be unimpressive to some people. That's (excuse the pun) cool.
By the same token it *was* the front-page story of a major US newspaper. It had quotes and data from serious, non-fringe, non-emotional scientists who have studied this for decades. In our opinion, that's more than just a 'few' data points. And as we've said, wherever one stands (or sits) in the spectrum of cynical-unimpressed-impressed-panicked, we want people - in particular, PMs - to be aware of the facts. I suppose we're on the "impressed" point on that scale when we hear that 443 US weather stations set warmest-ever-recorded temperatures and only one (in Hawaii) recorded the coolest. As an engineer by background, that says to me, "this deserves more study". As a project manager, it says, "be more knowledgeable about climate change and what it means in terms of infrastructure projects like renewables".
| Anonymous |
Rich, thanks for your thoughtful response. The weather certainly has been strange here in western New England. The winter of 2010-11 was very cold and had lots of snow. Aside from the freak snow storm of October 2011, there was hardly a winter at all in 2011-12. So far the winter of 2012-13 is likewise missing in action. While three data points does not make a climatic trend, it is interesting. Also there is my intution that an increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is presumably tied to human activity, probably has some effect. I agree that it is an area worthy of extensive study.
As for the Boston Globe, I don't hold it in high regard. They certainly do publish valid news stories when it reinforces their ideological perspective. They also suppress and distort the news when that suits their ideological prejudices. I recall one particular instance where they did that on a subject on which I had extensive knowledge, and that's what I gave up on the Globe. To me, it's not a reliable source.
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