Azzam,
"It is like riding a bicycle." is commonly used in English to express something that is easy, and once you learn how to do it, you never forget how to maintain balance, and control the bicycle.
I read that quote as a humorous way to say that the fundamentals are easy and become natural, but you are constantly facing one crisis after another.
Keith
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2 replies by Aziz Azzam and Luis Branco
Nov 09, 2019 12:42 PM
Luis Branco
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Dear Keith
Interesting your interpretation of reflection
Thanks for sharing it.
Do you think project management fundamentals are easy to apply in this turbulent world? :-)
Nov 09, 2019 2:32 PM
Aziz Azzam
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Thanks,
Saving Changes...
Alexandre CostaScrum Master| Integer Consulting - Pictet technologiesLoures, Portugal
Is inded an interesting sentence, it's also the title of a book from Darren Weeks that i never read that has the clear purpose to be appealing. Riding a bike could be easy but if the bike is on fire is not easy any more. Out of the context i can infere that being project manager is a hard job because you must do every thing it takes to execute your project and deliver the result on schedule and budget, during this process you must balance your actions between the will of all stakeholders, that includes customers, suplieers, top managers and your team, all parts interested and find a way to please all, so you are constantly in the middle of cross fire, must be prepared to react to changes, and solve all problems that frequently happens. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Nov 09, 2019 12:23 PM
Replying to Keith Novak
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Azzam,
"It is like riding a bicycle." is commonly used in English to express something that is easy, and once you learn how to do it, you never forget how to maintain balance, and control the bicycle.
I read that quote as a humorous way to say that the fundamentals are easy and become natural, but you are constantly facing one crisis after another.
Keith
Dear Keith
Interesting your interpretation of reflection
Thanks for sharing it.
Do you think project management fundamentals are easy to apply in this turbulent world? :-)
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1 reply by Keith Novak
Nov 09, 2019 1:55 PM
Keith Novak
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I think the fundamental theories are relatively easy to apply conceptually, but once reality enters the picture, everything changes.
There is a famous saying, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." That is where reality meets the plan. That fundamental truth can cause "analysis paralysis" or in other words, trying to plan every contingency before ever moving forward. I know that whatever I do will encounter problems, so how can I plan around all the problems? Meanwhile the clock doesn't stop and we are still spending resources.
I've worked a number of highly fluid projects where we have to be very agile by their nature because the future is never predictable, such as we don't even know what we have to fix, until we figure out what's broken. In these situations, I sometimes use the term "The Happy Path". That is the plan, until the problems arise. We can't plan or even consider every contingency, so we focus on the happy path, and when we stray off that path, we improvise.
As a PM, we want to ride our bicycle down the happy path, but then everything catches fire and we do the best we can with what we have to work with.
Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Aziz Interesting your question. Thanks for sharing
I'm not the non-English speaking either.
My interpretation is that it is easy to speak about project management, difficult to do
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1 reply by Alexandre Costa
Nov 09, 2019 1:10 PM
Alexandre Costa
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Dear Luís,
You hit the spot, everybody can speak about project management, do it is clearly more dificult, is needed a set of the skills in several domains to be able to complete the project with success.
Saving Changes...
Alexandre CostaScrum Master| Integer Consulting - Pictet technologiesLoures, Portugal
Nov 09, 2019 12:46 PM
Replying to Luis Branco
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Dear Aziz Interesting your question. Thanks for sharing
I'm not the non-English speaking either.
My interpretation is that it is easy to speak about project management, difficult to do
Dear Luís,
You hit the spot, everybody can speak about project management, do it is clearly more dificult, is needed a set of the skills in several domains to be able to complete the project with success. Saving Changes...
Dear Keith
Interesting your interpretation of reflection
Thanks for sharing it.
Do you think project management fundamentals are easy to apply in this turbulent world? :-)
I think the fundamental theories are relatively easy to apply conceptually, but once reality enters the picture, everything changes.
There is a famous saying, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." That is where reality meets the plan. That fundamental truth can cause "analysis paralysis" or in other words, trying to plan every contingency before ever moving forward. I know that whatever I do will encounter problems, so how can I plan around all the problems? Meanwhile the clock doesn't stop and we are still spending resources.
I've worked a number of highly fluid projects where we have to be very agile by their nature because the future is never predictable, such as we don't even know what we have to fix, until we figure out what's broken. In these situations, I sometimes use the term "The Happy Path". That is the plan, until the problems arise. We can't plan or even consider every contingency, so we focus on the happy path, and when we stray off that path, we improvise.
As a PM, we want to ride our bicycle down the happy path, but then everything catches fire and we do the best we can with what we have to work with.
...
1 reply by Luis Branco
Nov 10, 2019 4:09 AM
Luis Branco
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Dear Keith
We are, without a doubt, absolutely in agreement
Azzam,
"It is like riding a bicycle." is commonly used in English to express something that is easy, and once you learn how to do it, you never forget how to maintain balance, and control the bicycle.
I read that quote as a humorous way to say that the fundamentals are easy and become natural, but you are constantly facing one crisis after another.
Keith
Thanks, Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
While indeed it could be close to be a joke there is a big mistake in the phrase. You are hire as project manager to prevent the fire. The only thing people do not accept from a project manager is she/he do not demostrate to control the project. That´s meant there is not room for fire.
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1 reply by Keith Novak
Nov 10, 2019 10:26 PM
Keith Novak
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@ Sergio my friend: If it wasn't for the occasional fires, we would call it "Project Planning" instead of "Project Management", and that would take most of the fun out of it. :-)
Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Nov 09, 2019 1:55 PM
Replying to Keith Novak
...
I think the fundamental theories are relatively easy to apply conceptually, but once reality enters the picture, everything changes.
There is a famous saying, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." That is where reality meets the plan. That fundamental truth can cause "analysis paralysis" or in other words, trying to plan every contingency before ever moving forward. I know that whatever I do will encounter problems, so how can I plan around all the problems? Meanwhile the clock doesn't stop and we are still spending resources.
I've worked a number of highly fluid projects where we have to be very agile by their nature because the future is never predictable, such as we don't even know what we have to fix, until we figure out what's broken. In these situations, I sometimes use the term "The Happy Path". That is the plan, until the problems arise. We can't plan or even consider every contingency, so we focus on the happy path, and when we stray off that path, we improvise.
As a PM, we want to ride our bicycle down the happy path, but then everything catches fire and we do the best we can with what we have to work with.
Dear Keith
We are, without a doubt, absolutely in agreement Saving Changes...
While indeed it could be close to be a joke there is a big mistake in the phrase. You are hire as project manager to prevent the fire. The only thing people do not accept from a project manager is she/he do not demostrate to control the project. That´s meant there is not room for fire.
@ Sergio my friend: If it wasn't for the occasional fires, we would call it "Project Planning" instead of "Project Management", and that would take most of the fun out of it. :-)
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1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Nov 11, 2019 4:21 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
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I could agree about "occasional" if it is because unknown risks or something like that. But I still think that project manager is hire to prevent the fire. No matter that, from long time ago, people hire me to extinguish the existing fire. Including my actual work place where I am working from 8 years ago all progrmas/projects "on fire" are assigned to me, to be honest.
