Two Minute Drill

I was in a meeting with my client today, and it was a painful experience - those who have been in the consulting business for a while know the type of meeting it was. A deadline approaches. There are issues, both with completed functionality and change requests. The functional team doesn't have time or resources to fully document the things that need to change, and the technical team doesn't want to start work until requirements are made clear. The standard response to this from a "classical" project management perspective is to break into a smaller group, hash out the details, and hope it's enough for the technical team to work with, which more often than not isn't accomplished. So, the cycle begins again, and a day or two is lost for development and testing.

Unfortunately, most project managers are only versed in the PMI-approved PMBOK* style of project management, which tends to fall apart when the heat is on. Often, this leads to acrimony among the project team, missed deadlines, and software riddled with errors - not a good result.

Then, something occurred to me - I was watching a football game. The home team was behind by two scores with about six minutes remaining in the game. They have a solid game plan, but some bad fortune caused them to fall behind. What usually happens, sports fans? Of course - the offense goes into a "no huddle" mode, improvising plays at the line of scrimmage (within the parameters of their offensive skills) to try to score quickly and get back in the game. Yes, mistakes are made along the way, but the eleven players on the team have faith that they will all do their jobs well and, together, they will accomplish their goal, which is to win the game.

So, here's an idea - perhaps we as project management professionals should expect the possibility that we might be behind the eight-ball with a looming deadline, and plan some contingencies and change our management style, much like the football team does. For example, change to an Agile/Scrum project management mode in the last few weeks before deployment to facilitate rapid change. Of course, that would assume that everyone on the team knows how to react to a change like that, and the coaching staff (project managers) know how to make that change. That is a massive assumption - there's very little rehearsal for contingencies like a football team practices, and the project managers usually only know one way to coach.

This is the challenge - approach projects like football games. Radical? Perhaps, but it might not hurt as badly as the current state of play...


* "Project Management Book of Knowledge" - the Bible of the PMI, and a great book - but only one way to approach the subject...