Tailoring your Suit of Armor / Stocking your Armory

My project team has an actual armory but there are a lot of regulations about what we have in there.

@Sergio,

It’s a metaphor for:
- Defensive: Being prepared for those things that “come against you and your teams” during a project.
- Offensive: Being prepared to spearhead (i.e. lead) your teams to their objective, whether it be through the valleys or rugged terrain.

For instance:
- As Kiron stated, building relationships with key stakeholders beforehand – that would primarily be defensive in makeup, but you could argue that it is also offensively purposed.
- A well-structured project charter builds accountability structures that protect the project (i.e. defense).
- When necessary, a well-positioned “political maneuver” would be an offensive tactic.
- etc.

All of this is talking about our profession, but using a metaphor to trigger a challenge-based-response in the reader, in hopes of creating something of value in their environment. In other words, looking at the knowledge we (already) have from variant views has the possibility of creating an opportunity that we may not have realized before.

As it relates to your statement, “the current world is cooperative, not competitive,” I would say that this is a 50%/50% statement. Projects and project managers are in the business of implementing change, and change, for many, is a non-welcome event. Hence, the push-back we receive in projects such as A) Knowledge Rationing, B) Subterfuge, C) Confrontation, D) Political Maneuvers, E) Redefinitions, etc., etc., etc.

So, my apologies if I insulted anyone with this metaphor.

In my case you do not insult me at all. In fact, I am writting here because your post is very interesting for me and I think I can learn from people comment. I still sustain my previous comment no matter your explanation which I undestood in the first time. No matter metaphor or not my point is can't go through anyone's mind what you stated. Let me try in the best english I can. My other profession is tennis coach. If you ask me about tennis then I will agree at all. But into other fields it is a big mistake to have in mind this type of things when you start a program/project. Is the big mistake somebody can do. I am talking about my personal experience not only about what I think or about "academic". For example your interpretation about @Kiron stated as deffensive or offensive has no sense in that framework (if @Kiron said that directed to it I respect @Kiron way of thinking of course). At the end my point still is: PM must "delete" from its mind those words do not fail at all.