Periodic Change: Planned and Unplanned

 

When I see, so many changes around us, like the seasons, weather, government, policies and so on. One thing that comes to my mind, these are the changes that happen on a defined period. These are known changes, can say in better words, sometimes planned too. But do they definitely bring a positive effect?

Recently some of the very unplanned changes were implemented in the society and it was for good. We see adaptability playing a vital role in the businesses and even in the society. 

When I ponder upon some of the works of the great biologist, like Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which explains that individuals best suited to their environment are most likely to survive, I see the significance of adaptability. Another biologist Richard Dawkins in his book called "The Selfish Gene" writes about the idea of the replication genes as the central force behind evolution. So, in a way replication and adaptation gives us the roots of changes in the nature. What we learn here as the nature has its great ways to adapt and replicate, so can the project in the modern day world.

What's the best way to plan for the changes which are periodic and anticipatory?

The best plan is the one that gives us the best results in the project. And once a plan is proved to be good, the same can be replicated for the periodic changes with minor tweaking to it. Then we can call these changes as periodic and planned.

A question comes to mind, how we account for storms and earth quacks? There we can develop a probability and impact matrix to asses the risks. Like the meteorologist and seismologist warn and forecast risk and impact, the same way the Project managers do it for projects. The evolution of processes and management has happened with time and efforts. The processes which got popular and were replicated fast became prominent. But again the planned changes to them gave new and better fit for the organisation and people.

For periodic changes too, we need to refer the lesson learned repository, as the time may bring some better results if we look at the history of it.

So, dear readers, what you change periodically in your projects and how you plan for it?