eXtreme Project Management

Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility

Douglas DeCarlo, Doug DeCarlo

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780787974091
  9780787974091
• eBook ISBN:
  9780470573679
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Todays new breed, eXtreme projects are different. They feature high speed, high change, high complexity, high risk, and high stress. While traditional projects follow the classic model of ready, aim, fire, eXtreme project managers succeed by shooting the gun and then redirecting the bullet while not loosing sight of their moving target.eXtreme Project Management provides a practical guide for leaders working under high risk and high pressure while producing the desired bottom-line results. Based on Doug DeCarlos extensive experience in working with more than 250 project teams, his eXtreme project management model is built around an integrated set of principles, values, skills, tools, and practices proven to consistently work under conditions of rapid change and uncertainty.eXtreme project management is based on the premise that you dont manage the unknown the same way you manage the known. Its a people-centric approach to high performance that makes quality of life a fundamental part of the project venture.

Part One
The New Reality

In the Introduction, I described the need for changing the paradigm of project management for today’s high-speed, change-driven world. This paradigm shift needs to happen on two levels. On one level, we need to change the model of what project management is all about. On a deeper, more fundamental level, we need to change our own perceptions of reality and our relationship to it. The two chapters in Part One address both levels.

Chapter One examines the paradigm shift at the deeper level, in ourselves. Virtually all management theory and practice, whether related to project management or not, is based on the mind-set that reality is stable, predictable, and knowable. The quantum mind-set, in contrast, is based on the reality that change is normal and unpredictable.

Coping with an eXtreme world requires us to start at the beginning by changing our own mind-sets. I describe the quantum mind-set in full and provide an opportunity to assess how well your own beliefs and practices, and those of your organization, align with the quantum mind-set.

In an eXtreme world where change is normal and unpredictable, the standard tools, templates, and processes of traditional project management are almost useless. Chapter Two offers a set of principles, values, and practices that are compatible with change and uncertainty—a paradigm shift concerning what projects are all about. The eXtreme model for success takes the focus away from templates and tools and places it squarely on leadership, the only thing that can keep us on course in the face of rapid, unpredictable change.

Chapter One
Developing a Quantum Mind-Set for an eXtreme Reality

We are facilitators of disorder.

MARGARET WHEATLEY,
LEADERSHIP AND THE NEW SCIENCE

Just like a software package, our brains come with default settings—a mind-set. By mind-set, I mean a set of beliefs and assumptions about how the world works. This is our internal programming. In this chapter I take a closer look at the eXtreme, or quantum, mind-set, contrast it sharply with the Newtonian worldview, and highlight the absurd project management behavior that results when one attempts to apply Newtonian thinking in a quantum world.

Here is a quick review of the key ideas to keep in mind:

• By quantum mind-set, I mean a worldview that is compatible with change and unpredictability. The quantum mind-set assumes that change is the norm.
• The Newtonian or linear mind-set assumes that stability is the norm.
• eXtreme projects need to be managed with a predominantly quantum mind-set.
• Applying a quantum mind-set to a traditional project will ensure a poor result.
• Applying a Newtonian mind-set to an eXtreme project will wreak havoc.

Unlike the Newtonian cause-and-effect mind-set and related principles, eXtreme project management recognizes that although goals are achievable, how we get there is unpredictable. Hence, adaptability is more important than predictability. And since outcomes are not predicable, this paradigm shift in mind-set opens the door to applying the right-brained principles of quantum mechanics to project management. Quantum mechanics is the study of motion in the subatomic realm. This domain deals with unpredictability and the forces and laws that lie beneath and beyond the physical world. The Newtonian world is about predictability and how the physical world works. The quantum world is about patterns and probability and how the subatomic world of particles and energy works.

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Adaptability is more important than predictability.

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A critical component of the quantum world is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which says that with subatomic particles such as electrons, we cannot know both the particle’s precise position and its momentum (or velocity). The more precisely we measure its position, the less we can know about its momentum, and vice versa. The uncertainty principle does not state that it is hard to measure both simultaneously or that we don’t have good enough instruments. It states that we cannot do so in principle because the act of measurement affects what we measure.

In the Newtonian world, we can measure these two quantities as precisely as we please (more or less). In other words, a traffic officer can point a radar gun at your car and tell exactly where the car is and its precise speed, simultaneously. Imagine a traffic officer who lived in a subatomic world. He could never issue a speeding ticket. If he measured a car’s speed, he wouldn’t know where it was (and so couldn’t know it’s in a 35 mph zone). If he pinpointed exactly where a car was (in the 35 mph zone), he couldn’t measure its speed. When dealing with eXtreme projects, we have to realize that a similar uncertainty principle applies. The more we try to control one aspect of a project, the less control we will have over others.

Is There a Method to Your Madness?

The importance of adopting a quantum mind-set to eXtreme projects is illustrated by a story.

While having lunch in the serene and sylvan setting of the Sterling Farms Golf and Country Club in Stamford, Connecticut, my stomach started to knot up. On this sweltering summer day, my chicken caesar salad ended up mostly untouched. It wasn’t the warm creamy dressing and the soggy croutons that were getting to me. It was the scenario being described by my luncheon guest, Tammy. Tammy (not her real name) was the head of software application development for a high-flying and very visible dot.com company. We were talking about project management when I asked her to tell me about the major challenges in running projects in a dot.com environment. She described a “typical” project environment, one that would make chaos seem like a snooze under the umbrella on a quiet beach.

Marketing, sales, finance, application development, customer support, network services, database management, senior management, and eight outside vendors were all interacting with one another, she told me, and mostly in an ad hoc way. On top of that, the information technologies they were working with were also in a state of flux. Moreover, this dot.com wasn’t the only game on the net. So on top of it all, Tammy’s application development group had to react to what the competition was up to. Change was frequent and relentless. Time frames and budget didn’t mean anything. And management wanted accurate forecasts. The impact of these dynamics made for a stress-filled workplace and an unfulfilled workforce.

I was sure that all this frustration had to overflow into everyone’s family life as well. A toxic scenario.

Six months later I again had lunch with Tammy. This time there was no time to enjoy a sylvan setting, so we ate in the employee cafeteria. Since the day of our first lunch together, the company had gone public, and there was heightened pressure for accountability and predictability. To help get things under control and to establish some project management standards, a new software tool had been brought in, along with a time reporting system. Tammy related that the training on the software tool w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword by James P. Lewis
• Preface: Out of the Darkness
• Acknowledgments
• The Author
• Introduction: Into the Light
• Part One: The New Reality
• Part Two: Leadership Skills for an eXtreme World
• Part Three: The Flexible Project Model
• Part Four: Managing the Project Environment
• Afterword by Robert K. Wysocki
• eXtreme Tools and Techniques
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement