{"id":6095,"date":"2011-03-09T12:44:22","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T19:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=6095"},"modified":"2011-03-09T04:28:53","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T11:28:53","slug":"fresh-or-sour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=6095","title":{"rendered":"Fresh or sour?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Can I honestly say I play Chess?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my earlier blog I introduced the concept of using stories to break project disasters to executives.<\/em><\/p>\n

I never took too much interest in chess as a child.\u00a0 No let me rephrase that.\u00a0\u00a0I 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!\u00a0\u00a0That does not mean I don’t like or cannot play board games, I am hooked on and love\u00a0backgammon and can do\u00a0draughts for my young niece and nephews draughts (uses the same board as a chess board~).<\/p>\n

I can “do”\u00a0chess \u2013 if I am really pressed to!\u00a0 I know all the pieces on the board (by name). \u00a0I know how they are permitted to move, know most of the rules and some standard moves.\u00a0 But that certainly does not make me any real\u00a0chess player!\u00a0 Even though backgammon, draughts and chess all use boards \u2013 they are entirely different games testing different skills.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I know\u00a0I am not proficient\u00a0to start the chess game with a winning game plan in mind,\u00a0if all I can do is\u00a0move around the board hoping not to be beaten, then that is a useless exercise.<\/p>\n

One can know all the tools of project management, that’s not the question.\u00a0 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<\/span> of the game and come up with a winning formula.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 OR will they simply spend hours of non product time shuffling pieces around the board waiting without truly gaining any traction \u2013 waiting for the eventual axe to drop!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 prior<\/em> to doing all the detailed planning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fresh or Sour?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the last few years I have gained a reputation and role for being the 911 program reviewer and manager.\u00a0 When the project or program shows signs of illness, I am asked to \u201cpop along\u201d and see what can be done!\u00a0 Often I end up staying way beyond my sell by date (that’s what it feels like!).\u00a0 Doing this I have learnt a lot about patience, perseverance and most of all human nature.<\/p>\n

I recently sat down and had a very hard chat with our company MD.\u00a0 He simply would not entertain the fact a project I was reviewing was too ill for us to continue in the same way.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

No matter how much I investigated, contemplated, considered, planned and re-planned \u2013 the project was just too sick to fix!<\/p>\n

I had to figure a way for him to be able to hear this.\u00a0 I finally settled on milk!\u00a0<\/p>\n

I told him that no matter how much fresh milk one added<\/em> to sour milk, the net effect at the end of the day is sour milk!\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u201cgot broke<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 I then listed all the broken items and what had already been tried in an attempt to work around the issues.<\/p>\n

There was a lot of unhappiness for a few days.\u00a0 Then the bad feelings stopped and the truth settled in.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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

I was no initially popular, that’s for sure but at least we\u00a0stopped pouring great volumes of\u00a0effort for no return until we had done a proper assessment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can I honestly say I play Chess? In my earlier blog I introduced the concept of using stories to break […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1509,"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":[2,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-communications","category-miscellaneous"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6095","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\/1509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}