Fresh or sour?

Can I honestly say I play Chess?

In my earlier blog I introduced the concept of using stories to break project disasters to executives.

I never took too much interest in chess as a child.  No let me rephrase that.  I was more outdoorsy – running around the hockey field, cycling, swimming or doing fencing and I didnt have anyone in my circle that was a chess player!  That does not mean I don’t like or cannot play board games, I am hooked on and love backgammon and can do draughts for my young niece and nephews draughts (uses the same board as a chess board~).

I can “do” chess – if I am really pressed to!  I know all the pieces on the board (by name).  I know how they are permitted to move, know most of the rules and some standard moves.  But that certainly does not make me any real chess player!  Even though backgammon, draughts and chess all use boards – they are entirely different games testing different skills.   I know I am not proficient to start the chess game with a winning game plan in mind, if all I can do is move around the board hoping not to be beaten, then that is a useless exercise.

One can know all the tools of project management, that’s not the question.  The real point I was trying to make when using this analogy is that a number of project managers are often not experienced enough to know the strategy of the game and come up with a winning formula.  They may know the tools and rules, but in the face of live clients with moving expectations – can the PM utilise these tools and practises to achieve a winning result.  OR will they simply spend hours of non product time shuffling pieces around the board waiting without truly gaining any traction – waiting for the eventual axe to drop!  

How many times have projects started out without stating up front what the value proposition is, how it will be achieved and what success represents – prior to doing all the detailed planning. 

Fresh or Sour?

In the last few years I have gained a reputation and role for being the 911 program reviewer and manager.  When the project or program shows signs of illness, I am asked to “pop along” and see what can be done!  Often I end up staying way beyond my sell by date (that’s what it feels like!).  Doing this I have learnt a lot about patience, perseverance and most of all human nature.

I recently sat down and had a very hard chat with our company MD.  He simply would not entertain the fact a project I was reviewing was too ill for us to continue in the same way.  The entire team had turned not once but twice in the preceding two years and the scope had leapt – the project team was resentful and exhausted while the client humour was threadbare of humour.

No matter how much I investigated, contemplated, considered, planned and re-planned – the project was just too sick to fix!

I had to figure a way for him to be able to hear this.  I finally settled on milk! 

I told him that no matter how much fresh milk one added to sour milk, the net effect at the end of the day is sour milk!  The only way to be rid of all the sour milk is to toss it out, clean the bottle and start by putting in only fresh milk. 

I told him that while this sounded radical, if we were determined to continue with this with the aim of completion – we had to go back to before it “got broke”.  I then listed all the broken items and what had already been tried in an attempt to work around the issues.

There was a lot of unhappiness for a few days.  Then the bad feelings stopped and the truth settled in.  Now we are all working with the same mind set and realistically evaluating what can be salvaged and what needs to be resumed and which parts needs to be restarted.

Often when something is broken it is hard to sell or believe that the right way forward is to either stop completely or alternatively take a few steps backwards, but the milk analogy hit home.

I was no initially popular, that’s for sure but at least we stopped pouring great volumes of effort for no return until we had done a proper assessment.