Easy in theory, difficult in practice

Based on the extensive media coverage, YouTube videos, TED Talks, and books published, many might agree that 2023 has been hailed as the year of artificial intelligence, at least in terms of mindshare if not market dominance.

Throughout the past year, online project management communities have frequently discussed the potential impact of A.I. tools on the role of project managers. While concerns persist about potential negative effects, such as new project risks and potential job displacement, there's also optimism. A.I. tools, when used appropriately, are seen as potential assistants in delivering projects more efficiently and effectively, akin to other professions.

However, let's maintain perspective. Like previous project management tools—such as schedulers and knowledge management platforms—some aspects of our work won't be affected by A.I. until projects can be entirely completed by machines without human involvement.

Certain challenges will persist:

1. Commitments will still be made prematurely: A.I. might provide better reasoning for unattainable completion dates or funding amounts, but it's unlikely to deter senior stakeholders from imposing unrealistic constraints.
2. What you don't know will still hurt more than what you do know: In the near term, we won't have sufficiently advanced A.I. capabilities to identify all the possible risks which could impact our projects. And as complexity continues to increase, the likelihood remains that unknown-unknowns will affect our projects to a greater extent than the known-unknowns.
3. Stakeholders will continue to surprise us: Provided sufficient context, A.I. tools might be able to improve our forecast of how stakeholders will respond to a given decision or project approach. However, if we've learned anything from The Matrix, even if humans are part of an A.I. system, they'll still find ways to behave unexpectedly.
4. More concurrent work than can be effectively delivered: A.I. tools might give us a better understanding of the capacity within our teams and our throughput potential, but with the exception of those who use product-centric delivery models or who embrace the flow guidance of Dr. Goldratt or Don Reinertsen, most will still welcome more work into their system than should be permitted, so multitasking, work overload and the inability to accurately forecast people's availability will persist.
5. The single biggest problem in communication: A.I. tools will eventually help us to bridge communication gaps with real-time context sensitive translation and guidance to make better choices about messaging tone, medium and other factors. Nevertheless, some gaps, as demonstrated in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation's' episode 'Darmok,' may remain insurmountable.

So as the dawn of 2024 approaches, lets greet it with the confidence that while some things are likely change in project delivery, most won't.

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order." - Alfred North Whitehead

During a presentation I delivered today to members of the PMI Nova Scotia chapter on cultivating psychological safety, one of the attendees asked how would she be able to assess whether the team she was going to join was safe prior to joining.

This is a great question because whenever we move to a new company or even a different division in a sufficiently large company, our access to verifiable information is quite limited. For obvious reasons, the leadership of our new team will usually not want to provide evidence of a poor team culture and unless we have trusted connections within the team itself or have access to someone who has recently left the team, it can be difficult to feel confident that we aren't jumping into a snake pit.

It is certainly worth asking your potential new manager questions such as:

• "How much turnover had there been within the team?"
• "Could I see a copy of the team's working agreements?
• "Can you give me an example of a recent time when a team member challenged the status quo?"
• "How frequently do your team members challenge a decision you've made?"

But, I'd also recommend asking the manager to speak one-on-one with a few team members.

If they resist that request, walk away.

But let's say they are open to it.

Here are a few questions to consider asking when you meet with each team member:

• "Think back to the last time you made a mistake with the work you do in the team. How was the news of that mistake received by your manager and your fellow team members?"
• "When was the last time you provided constructive feedback to a fellow team member? How about to your manager?"
• "Can you describe a situation where you challenged a decision which your manager and the majority of the team were endorsing?"
• "Can you think of a time when someone from outside of the team was being overly critical of you or another team member and what did the rest of the team or your manager do?"

While it is quite feasible that one or more of the team members you speak with might be under the manager's thrall, active listening while you ask these probing questions might reveal something different than what the person is saying.

Joining a new organization is fraught with risks but with a little bit of due diligence you can reduce the odds of snake bite!

I read a number of project leadership books each year but usually I find only one or two which really make an impact. Professor Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner's book "How Big Things Get Done" is one of the latter.

I have never had the opportunity to lead a megaproject (the term is typically used for those with a budget in excess of $1 billion), but over the last fifteen years I have read a number of the articles published by Prof. Flyvbjerg on the subject and always learned lessons which were applicable to the projects I was involved with.

In the book, the authors provide many case studies supporting eleven heuristics derived from Prof. Flyvbjerg's decades of research into large, complex projects. While the term "heuristic" is apt as each is a useful mental shortcut, they could also be used as principles.

Given that twenty-two out of the twenty-three categories of the projects evaluated are physical projects (e.g. construction, mining, aerospace), it is tempting to assume that these heuristics are only relevant to projects delivered with a predictive approach.

That would be an invalid assumption as out of the eleven heuristics, I found that most are equally applicable to adaptive delivery. Here are just a few which fit well.

Hire a masterbuilder: we want to have someone with significant domain experience and a proven track record of success leading the work. Whether we are looking to fill the role of a project manager, an agile lead (e.g. Scrum Master) or a product owner, relevant experience and knowledge are critical.

Get your team right: The first value statement in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development is "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". And as Prof. Flyvbjerg states, the main job of the masterbuilder is to pick the right team members to get the work done.

Ask "Why?": While the scope of a project is expected to emerge over its life when using an adaptive delivery approach, it can be a fatal mistake to not spend sufficient time upfront identifying an expected end vision. This North Star enables the team to challenge work items which will not achieve the desired outcomes and reduces the likelihood of an adaptive delivery approach being a random walk to nowhere.

Build with Lego: The idea of creating large systems from smaller components is a natural fit with the incremental nature of adaptive delivery. When a team takes a large work item and figures out a way to slice it into smaller pieces which still individually deliver value they are applying this heuristic.

Think slow, act fast: On the surface, this heuristic sounds like an invitation for big, heavy, upfront paper-based planning which agilists eschew. This is not what Prof. Flyvbjerg is advocating. What he is recommending is to reduce the cost of trial and error by taking the time to identify key areas of uncertainty which could impact successful delivery and to learn and find ways to address them effectively as early as possible in the project's life cycle. The examples which are provided about how Pixar plans its films or how Frank Gehry designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao both demonstrate early de-risking which is a core attribute of adaptive delivery.

Say no and walk away: Prof. Flyvbjerg highlights the importance of focus when delivering complex projects. If an action does not contribute to achieving the project's outcomes, skip it. This aligns well with the tenth principle of the Manifesto: "Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential."

While I have not covered all of the heuristics and their adaptive delivery applicability in this article, I hope that I have encouraged all of you to read this book, regardless of the domain or the approach used to deliver your projects.

When I first read it, I found that one of the more interesting characters in Tom Clancy's debut novel, The Hunt for Red October, was the political officer, Ivan Putin. His role is to ensure that the leadership and crew of the nuclear submarine were acting in alignment with the values and principles of the Soviet Union. He acts independent from the rest of the crew as his reporting relationship is to Moscow and not to the submarine's leadership team. While the role is expected to help the crew navigate the complex set of rules and regulations, Ivan proves to be more of an impediment than an asset.

What does this have to do with project management, you ask? At the risk of offending some readers, it is about political correctness and cancel culture.

As I approach my mid-fifties, I recognize that there are behaviors, beliefs and phrases which were generally acceptable when I was growing up which are no longer so. And while I am comfortable receiving constructive feedback from others on how I could modernize my mindset, I also recognize that if I were working full- time in a project management role I might accidentally violate one of our new norms with potentially severe consequences to myself.

These day many folks no longer remember Hanlon's Razor.

When leading projects, as the number of stakeholders increases the likelihood of causing unintentional offense will also increase. To prevent "cancellation" of project managers and their team members, perhaps we need a new PCO role to educate and help them avoid committing such errors. While that acronym normally stands for Project Control Officer (which is a support role similar to a Project Analyst or Project Coordinator) it might now stand for Political Correctness Officer.

Should our profession evolve (?) to warrant such a role, it would be advisable to remember the treatment which Ivan Putin received at the hands of Captain Marko Ramius.

For those of you who are Do It Yourself (DIY) pros, you may not consider this a significant accomplishment, but not usually being a DIY'er, I am quite pleased with having installed ceramic wall tiles for the first time ever. In this particular case, the tiling was backsplash for our main bathroom sink area. Once the work was completed, a friend who had provided a lot of hands-on assistance and tool support suggested that there might be some delivery lessons I could harvest from this home improvement project so thanks Brendan for inspiring this article!

Measure twice, cut once

Part of the project involved the installation of trim at the left, right and top sides of the backsplash area. Having purchased an eight foot length of aluminum trim, we needed to cut it to fit and we needed to use a mitre box to get a 45 degree angle so the top left and right corner pieces would join cleanly. Although my friend measured the lengths and used that information to prepare for the cuts, he had me double-check the measurements on the trim length to confirm they were correct before starting to saw.

When you face a critical decision on a project, there can be a benefit in having your recommendation vetted by a trusted, independent party. While project decisions are made with imperfect information, this additional review can help to reduce the impacts of biases which you or your team might have.

Invest in good resources

My friend happened to have a half tub of premixed grout left over from his last project. When I checked the grout it was soft but fairly dry. While I could have tried to rehydrate it, this would have been a risky move as neither he nor I knew for certain how much water would need to be added. While there is some latitude for the consistency of the grout, adding too much water would have resulted in a runny grout which would run off and not set whereas too little would have resulted in a grout which wouldn't adhere well to the gaps between the tiles.

Given this, even though I only required a small amount, I chose to purchase a new tub. While it was costly, by doing so I was able to avoid one risk and had the confidence to do the grouting by myself thanks to the assistance of a few YouTube videos.

With projects, it can be tempting to work with what you can get with minimal effort and cost. Such short-term thinking might translate into longer term pain, so it is worth the effort to lobby for the right resources for those activities which present the greatest risk to successful delivery.

Keep your constraints in mind

My friend did not have a tile cutter and wanting to reduce the complexity and costs of the job, I needed to determine a tile size and backsplash layout which would work without the need for cutting. This constraint guided me to accept a stacked tile layout rather than a brickwork style.

Blue sky planning might result in a creative, ideal solution, but incorporating constraints ensures that plans are realistic.

While my project was quite small and simple, it still provided some useful lessons which could be applied to more complex contexts.