{"id":3236,"date":"2009-10-12T09:14:24","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T16:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=3236"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:30:06","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:30:06","slug":"is-the-enemy-us-or-fate-1-of-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=3236","title":{"rendered":"Is the Enemy Us or Fate? (1 of 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"via
via Flickr by HansKristian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One recent morning I was enjoying the company of my peers at the monthly PMI-Silicon Valley Chapter\u2019s PMO Breakfast meeting.\u00a0 As usual the conversation had degraded (a hardware perspective) to a discussion of software methodologies, that day specifically: When using Agile, how do you handle \u2026?\u00a0 Then out of the blue one of the participants threw a perspective on the table \u2013 \u201cFrom the outset, all projects are doomed to failure.\u201d\u00a0 Interesting pronouncement!\u00a0 My corollary; the PM\u2019s role is to snatch projects from the jaws of defeat (?). Being a grizzled veteran PM, I can\u2019t agree with the speaker\u2019s perspective, although at times I have taken over a project with that specific objective.\u00a0 My perspective is, \u201cMost projects fail because of people, not predestined fate.\u201d\u00a0 However, I do need to point out that typically there is no single cause of failure, but a number of related factors.<\/p>\n

My train of musings resulting from the pronouncement did prompt me to collect my thoughts on the subject of the PM\u2019s possible role in project failure \u2013 Why do some projects\/PMs succeed, while others fail?\u00a0 Certainly a major portion of it has to do with our individual human psychological factors.<\/p>\n

Now, I know I mentioned psychology (don\u2019t panic) and truth be known this is where most of this soft-stuff comes from; my intent is to keep it simple and understandable.\u00a0 We are going to do some thinking about thinking. One of the classic failure questions is, what were they thinking or how could they been so stupid, when they \u2026. ? What we\u2019re really asking is, why didn\u2019t they reach the solution that is obvious in hind-sight?\u00a0 We as individuals, as teams, and as organizations have built-in limitations.<\/p>\n

Nobel Prize-winner Herbert Simon postulated that we are boundedly rational (cognitively limited \u2013 not Vulcans) in information gathering and analysis.\u00a0 In that light, we are going to look at how cognitive biases (things that limit our thinking), mental framing (our perspectives) and reasoning by analogy (our ability to use past experiences) play a role in a PM\u2019s approach to all aspects of the project, whether planning, communicating, decision making, problem solving, etc.\u00a0 In the concluding summary we will look at complex and ambiguous situations, because these are the real project killers and the more complex the project the higher the probability that ambiguities, non-linearities and discontinuities will arise.<\/p>\n

Please join me in this series of blog post, as we dive a little deeper in our approaches to situations.\u00a0 I hope to provide you with an understanding of your own limitations and, as a result, give you pause to question your decisions, solutions, and actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One recent morning I was enjoying the company of my peers at the monthly PMI-Silicon Valley Chapter\u2019s PMO Breakfast meeting.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1489,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[658,657,656,476,655],"class_list":["post-3236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","tag-ambriguities","tag-analogies","tag-biases","tag-perspectives","tag-thinking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14325,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236\/revisions\/14325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}