Tag: Plan

Minimum Viable Certainty and Optimal Performance

Written by George Pitagorsky on June 26, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Optimal performance is operating as best as possible. It is achieved when we are in Flow, a state in which the sense of time blurs, we have a sense of effortless effort, and we get out of our own way. This is true of individuals and teams as well. To perform optimally we need to be fully absorbed in a task, concentrating on a clear goal.

We need certainty about where to channel our attention to let go into full absorption. And, we need to be able to accept uncertainty to avoid the distractions that come when we are not comfortable with it.

Attention and Focus

Concentration is a requirement for Flow. It is the ability to stay focused on a chosen object, a goal, an activity, or a task. But if we look more closely, we see that concentration needs focus and attention.

To sustain focus on a task you must be mindfully aware and persistent. That is what makes it possible to recognize distractions and remain focused by coming back to or staying with your task.

“According to Amisha Jha, a neuroscientist, there are three kinds of attention:

Open attention—using a floodlight to see or be objectively aware of what is occurring in a broad expanse. This is mindfulness.
Focused attention—shining a flashlight or laser to direct light on a chosen object. This is concentration.
Executive attention—deciding what, within the field of open attention, to attend to and what to do about it, regulating responses with mindful awareness and discernment, avoiding distraction. This is the effort required to sustain open and focused attention.”[1]

Focused attention—concentration—elicits and cultivates the experience of resting comfortably in the present moment. Open attention or mindfulness makes you aware of experiences and movement, telling you when you are distracted.

Certainty About The Goal

A clear goal is needed to focus attention. If the goal is fuzzy or constantly changing the ability to perform optimally is lost. We know this from experience in project work and life in general.

Once we start on a task, the more we are uncertain about where we are going – the goal – the more we are distracted.

When the goal changes, particularly if it happens frequently, we not only have to shift our attention, but we lose confidence in our leadership. Shifting attention we lose momentum. With a lack of confidence in leadership, we lose motivation.

While goals are subject to change when they are well thought out, they can be relatively stable.

Examples

Imagine a team of U.S. Navy Seals on a mission. If their target is changed in the middle of the mission, they will be less able to focus on the objective. If it changes more than once, they will likely lose trust and confidence. Their performance will suffer.

The same is true of a project performer or team faced with frequently changing goals and objectives.

Minimum Viable Certainty and Performance

But the need for certainty goes beyond goals. To perform optimally we need certainty about our next steps.

When goals are broken down into short-term goals, the objectives needed to be met to accomplish the goal, then each objective can be accomplished with greater certainty. The shorter the task, the fewer risk events can occur.

In a recent article, A. Poje states that “Recent research and the wisdom of the SEALs suggest that minimum viable certainty might be the key to achieving our highest potential.”[2]

Ultimately, one of the few things we can be certain of is uncertainty. Anything can change at any moment. Minimal viable certainty refers to the period during which certainty is high. We can create windows of high certainty, periods during which we can be relatively (though not 100%) certain about what is going to happen.

Navy SEALs, need very short periods of certainty. They seek a minimum viable certainty of 5 minutes or less. While skiing, the skier doesn’t look at obstacles but instead finds and plans for the path of certainty. That kind of planning is moment-to-moment. You sustain momentum and avoid hesitation and unnecessary thinking.

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Creating Certainty Windows

Executives, managers, and individual performers often feel the need for some certainty when there is a barrage of priority changes, and interruptions like emails and ‘urgent” calls while they are expected to hit planned target dates.

Each new message amplifies uncertainty. Sometimes it seems there is no way to get into Flow.

In project work our minimum viable certainty window is much longer than it is for the skier or the Seal – it may be hours, days, or weeks instead of seconds or minutes. Even in an environment with constantly changing priorities and interruptions we can plan and create windows of certainty.

While we may have a six-month project plan we can make our personal or team plan for a month, a week, a day, or even an hour out. In that window of certainty, we can focus attention and perform in Flow. Then we can regularly step back to adjust the longer-term goals and objectives.

Adaptability

While we need some certainty, we must be comfortable with the discomfort of uncertainty and confident in our ability to accept and adapt to whatever happens.

That comfort and confidence allow us to eliminate the worry that uncertainty brings. Instead of expecting things to turn out the way we’d like them to we focus and remain fully aware of what is happening now and in the next few moments so we can respond rather than react.

Minimum viable certainty is enough to keep you on your game, performing at the highest level possible.

To create a certainty window, turn off the interruptions, carving out the uninterrupted time needed to fully focus on the task at hand. If you can’t do it 100%, prioritize the interruptions so that you are increasingly likely to give yourself and your team the uninterrupted minimal viable certainty needed.

While you can never be certain, you can create stability by taking control of your situation as best you can. And you can cultivate the acceptance and resilience you need to be comfortable with the discomfort of uncertainty and anything that comes up.

When you strive for optimal performance, mindfully focus on the now and let go of distractions like worry and interruptions. Find the minimum viable certainty that works for you in your environment.

[1] [1] Pitagorsky, George, The Peaceful Warrior’s Path, 2023, p.135-136.

[2] https://medium.com/@andrewpoje/navigating-the-waters-of-peak-performance-the-seals-secret-to-flow-a8810606b4a9

The Convergence of Security and Project Management

Written by Jonathan Spiteri on November 14, 2023. Posted in Articles.

In the rapidly evolving world of IT, we frequently hear about vulnerable data being stolen and disseminated from renowned organisations, or businesses reporting disruptive attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assaults that bring their operations to a halt. While some of these disruptions may stem from a small bug that was not captured during testing, there are instances where the cause is much more serious.

The financial and reputational impact that these attacks have on organisations are huge, often requiring a substantial amount of time and effort for a full recovery. This underscores the importance for the organisation to have project managers who, leveraging their experience from past projects and their background in security training, can effectively assist the project team in recognising common vulnerability points and taking proactive steps to address them.

In recent years, a series of incidents have underscored the necessity of making security a critical aspect of project management. One prominent case is the Anthem Inc. Data Breach.

The Anthem Inc. Case

Elevance Health, formerly known as Anthem Inc. is one of the largest health insurance companies in the United State. Despite the expectations that organisations of a similar size would have invested significantly in security measures, in 2015, the company suffered a major data breach that exposed the personal and medical information of approx. 78.8 million individuals.

Investigations revealed that the cyberattack began through a spear-phishing campaign where cybercriminals used social engineering techniques to send deceptive emails to employees. One employee fell victim to the phishing attack, granting attackers access to Anthem’s database.

Needless to say, this breach had a significant financial impact on the company not only in terms of legal expenses but also in the effort required to strengthen their cybersecurity measures.

Key Takeaways for Project Managers

The Anthem Inc. security breach stands as a compelling example of the consequences when security becomes an afterthought in project management. This breach serves as a reminder of the critical role that project managers play in ensuring enough security considerations are taken into account throughout the course of the project. To this end, project managers should:

Ensure that a robust risk assessment is conducted not only during the project initiation phase, but also during execution and prior going live. Through these assessments organisations can proactively identify potential security breaches and mitigate them accordingly.
Advocate for the integration of security measures into project planning with all stakeholders. They need to emphasise the practice of prioritising security-related activities over adherence to predefined timelines.
Loop in subject matter experts throughout the course of the project to ensure compliance with the right security frameworks and meeting all compliance, regulatory and legal requirements.
Develop a robust incident response plan as part of the project delivery before the project goes live. This plan should include the identification of key stakeholders and the establishment of procedures and processes to address security incidents.
Leverage past lessons learned throughout the entire project lifecycle to avoid repeating past mistakes, while replicating good practices.
Effectively communicate security requirements with all stakeholders, ensuring that these are well understood by everyone involved. Additionally, like all other facets of project management, project managers should also ensure correct and timely reporting of progress.

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Exploration of Security Breaches Through Three Lenses

To support project managers in ensuring that key security measures have been considered in their project, I often suggest examining their projects from three different perspectives:

Internal Security

One common source of security breaches arises from internal factors, often originating from disgruntled employees or vulnerabilities within other internal systems or networks. While it is extremely difficult to prevent all potential internal security breaches, as sometimes even the most trusted employee can, for various reasons, become a threat to the project and the organisation, project managers play a pivotal role. Through tools like a Risk and Impact Assessment, they can ensure that people and the interconnected systems have the least-privilege access rights to confidential information, including software code and database itself. A properly constructed Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) Matrix can be extremely helpful for project managers in determining what type of security privilege should be assigned to whom, when, and under what circumstances.

External Security

When organisations involve external parties, the risk for security breaches increases significantly. These breaches are not only tied to theft and copying of trade secrets, but can also be the result of insufficient security controls on the external party’s side. Furthermore, the situation becomes more challenging when the outsourcing company is situated in another country with a different regulatory landscape.

Therefore, project managers should allocate ample testing time within the project timeline. This entails not only conducting well-thought-out and designed integration testing, but also ensuring that robust security testing is performed on both the third-party and overall system.

One approach organisations usually employ to ensure that security testing is conducted effectively, in compliance with the latest security standards, is by utilising the services of externally renowned and specialised security testing companies to perform these tests.

Finally, in cases where the organisation is outsourcing parts of its software, the project manager should ensure that there is an escrow agreement in place to minimise the risk of the company being left without access to the source code in the event that the outsourcing company suddenly folds.

Technology Lens

Finally, in a world where everything is interconnected, technology and device-related security breaches frequently occur. In light of this, I recommend that project managers keep a comprehensive list of standard security practices to integrate into every project they undertake. These activities include the key tasks such as: changing of default passwords, configuring firewall settings, testing of third-party hardware and software before connecting with company networks and servers, and ensuring the installation of the latest security patches. By adhering to these security measures, project managers can significantly enhance the protection of their projects and systems in the ever-evolving technological landscape.

In an era where information is power and trust is paramount, security is not an option —it’s an absolute necessity that must be integrated into every step and phase of every project and product’s lifecycle. A security breach isn’t limited to a mere disruption in operations. Besides the financial and reputational aspect, it has the potential to impact lives. Hence, this makes security not an accessory to project management, but rather a fundamental principle that ensures the success, integrity, and trustworthiness of the projects the organisation undertakes.

‘Delay Thinking’ Is a Project Success Factor

Written by George Pitagorsky on September 19, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Often, it is better to spend more time than it is to speed to meet a deadline. Fast is good but not always. When rushing to get something done the probability of causing damage is high.

Delay Thinking

Delay thinking recognizes that there is a delay or lag between an action and its effect. Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline says that “Delays can make you badly overshoot your mark, or they can have a positive effect if you recognize them and work with them.”

Figure 1 below is a diagram that explains the delay phenomena, he gives the example of the delay between the time you adjust the water temperature in the shower and the time the water reaches the desired temperature. If you understand the delay, you will make sure you don’t get doused in cold water or make the mistake of further turning up the hot.

What Does This Have to Do with Projects?

In both projects and operations, we make and act upon decisions. We set expectations among stakeholders about outcomes. We are expected to fix problems and do it fast.

Faced with problems we may seek quick fixes by applying solutions that worked in the past or in other organizations. We can be pressured into rushing ahead without doing the due diligence of assessing causes, multiple scenarios, and the impact of differences between the current situation and the ones in which a solution worked in the past.

In time bound projects, there is a tendency to overlook likely delays. For example, underestimating the time it takes to perform predecessor tasks when scheduling resources. The result is the cost of resources sitting idle while waiting for the results they need to proceed.

When we take delays into consideration expectations are realistic and problem resolutions end up making things better rather than worse.

Learning Curves and Change Management

For example, when a large organization implemented a system to reduce the effort of field managers by applying AI to automate their ordering process, they failed to recognize the delay caused by a combination of learning curves, manager resistance to a perceived loss of authority and autonomy, and the need to fine-tune the algorithm used to make ordering decisions. The result was avoidable chaos, supply chain disruption, and degraded performance. The new system was rejected.

The outcome would have been a far happier one had the project plan included a robust training process, “marketing,” and a calibration period with an incremental system rollout rather than a “big bang” implementation. All of these are “delays” that on the surface cause the project to run longer. Though more often than not, when looking below the surface these so-called delays save time, effort, money and reduce unnecessary stress.

Causes

What might cause failure to include delays in plans?

Everything has a cause and when we discover causes, we can better avoid repeating failures and making poor choices.

One predominant cause of this failure to consider delays is rushing to get a project completed in a certain time frame. The pressure to get your project done by a fixed date may be driven by many things – the whim of a senior stakeholder, funding availability, the need for resources on other planned projects, legal restrictions, seasonal weather conditions, etc.

When a “get it done by” mandate is in play, pressure, and the anxiety it brings leads decision makers to cut corners, perhaps forgetting that spending more time planning can result in exponentially less time during the rest of the project. Pressure and anxiety also lead to applying quick fixes which overlook long term consequences.

Expediency bias operates even when there is no major pressure to hit a deadline. It is the tendency to prefer quick action over taking the time to make sure there is clarity and understanding about short and longer-term results.

During planning, rushing and expediency bias leads to only looking at one scenario instead of a few. Assessing multiple scenarios opens the decision to useful analysis. But this takes time. When rushing, talk about lags or delays is impatiently squelched. The risk of making a poor decision based on limited information is high.

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Quick Fixes – Short Term thinking

Another dimension of delay thinking is the recognition that when resolving a problem, while short-term fixes might remove symptoms there is a delay before the nature of longer-term consequences are experienced.

We are often blind to the long-term effects of short-term decisions and actions. When there is a lag between our action and its effect, we are easily driven by the satisfaction of short-term pleasure and immediate gratification.

Take the decision between eating a bowl of ice cream and a salad. If you are like me, the ice cream is far more pleasing than the salad. And, at the end of the day, you’d look and feel the same regardless of your choice. So why not go for the ice cream.

But factor in delay thinking and you get to see that if you repeatedly opt for the ice cream over the salad the delayed longer-term effects start to show – weight gain, digestive issues, increased blood sugar levels, etc.

Looking at the short and long-term effects makes your decision making more effective. You know what you are gaining and giving up when you make your choice. You can opt for ice cream sometimes, but you are more likely to moderate, assuming your goal is good health. You can remove symptoms with a quick fix, but you had better consider the longer term impact and plan for it.

Awareness

Awareness is the key.

Being aware that delays are normal parts of experience makes it likely that we will consider them when making decisions and planning projects. Knowledge of the specific delays in your project comes from analysis and experience, your own and your institution’s.

Be aware of rushing and expediency bias and the power of spending more time in planning to playout various scenarios, consider delays and delayed effects, and cause removal vs. symptom removal options and their effects.

Think of what happens when you drop a stone into a pond of still water. Be aware that every action you take has a ripple effect and that the ripples appear over time, radiating in all directions.

[1] Senge, Peter, The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday, NY, 1990 p. 90

Best of PMTimes: The Five Goals of a Project Manager

Written by Jason Westland on May 17, 2023. Posted in Articles.

As a project manager, you need to manage people, money, suppliers, equipment—the list is never ending. The trick is to be focused. Set yourself five personal goals to achieve. If you can meet these simple goals for each project, then you will achieve total success.

These goals are generic to all industries and all types of projects. Regardless of your level of experience in project management, set these five goals for every project you manage.

Goal 1: To Finish on Time

This is the oldest but trickiest goal in the book. It’s the most difficult because the requirements often change during the project and the schedule was probably optimistic in the first place.

To succeed, you need to manage your scope very carefully. Implement a change control process so that any changes to the scope are properly managed.

Always keep your plan up to date, recording actual vs. planned progress. Identify any deviations from plan and fix them quickly.

Goal 2: To Finish Under Budget

To make sure that your project costs don’t spiral, you need to set a project budget at the start to compare against. Include in this budget, all the types of project costs that will accrue, whether they are to do with people, equipment, suppliers or materials. Then work out how much each task in your plan is going to cost to complete and track any deviations from this plan.

Make sure that if you over-spend on some tasks, that you under-spend on others. In this way, you can control your spend and deliver under budget.

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Goal 3: To Meet the Requirements

The goal here is to meet the requirements that were set for the project at the start. Whether the requirements were to install a new IT system, build a bridge or implement new processes, your project needs to produce solutions which meet these requirements 100%.

The trick here is to make sure that you have a detailed enough set of requirements at the beginning. If they are ambiguous in any way, then what was initially seen as a small piece of work could become huge, taking up valuable time and resources to complete.

Goal 4: To Keep Customers Happy

You could finish your project on time, under budget and have met 100% of the requirements—but still have unhappy customers. This is usually because their expectations have changed since the project started and have not been properly managed.

To ensure that your project sponsor, customer and other stakeholders are happy at the end of your project, you need to manage their expectations carefully. Make sure you always keep them properly informed of progress. “Keep it real” by giving them a crystal clear view of progress to date. Let them voice their concerns or ideas regularly. Tell them upfront when you can’t deliver on time, or when a change needs to be made. Openness and honesty are always the best tools for setting customer expectations.

Goal 5: To Ensure a Happy Team

If you can do all of this with a happy team, then you’ll be more than willing to do it all again for the next project. And that’s how your staff will feel also. Staff satisfaction is critical to your project’s success.

So keep your team happy by rewarding and recognizing them for their successes. Assign them work that complements their strengths and conduct team building exercises to boost morale. With a happy motivated team, you can achieve anything!

And there you have it. The five goals you need to set yourself for every project.

Of course, you should always work smart to achieve these goals more easily.

Published on May 12, 2010.

The Fallacy of SMART Goals

Written by Elizabeth Larson on January 24, 2023. Posted in Articles.

I recently read a news story about how to keep our New Year’s resolutions. The article was about the use of simple time management techniques, the center of which was setting SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that’s been around for decades and stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable Relevant, and Time-bound. Sometimes other words are used, such as assignable, realistic, timely, and testable.

It sounds good. It sounds useful. But simplifying time management into an acronym reduces the complexity of managing our projects to a seemingly simple formula, one that can prove frustrating. It reminds me of countless bosses and sponsors I’ve had who said, “Can’t you just tell me when the project will be done? Use SMART goals to help you figure it out!” Don’t get me wrong. I think this acronym is useful as a high-level framework. But if our goals too high-level, we run the risk of never achieving them. It’s just not that easy. Let me give you some examples using a project to build a house.

Specific. What does it mean to be specific? How are specific goals different from measurable or achievable or time-bound goals? In our house-building example house specifications are specific, as the name implies. There are specs for the exterior and the interior. Specs for landscaping, the roof, the plumbing, electrical and so forth. How specific do they need to be? Specs without detail might be helpful as an overview, but not for the actual construction of the house. We need to drill to down for the specs to be workable.

Measurable. To say that the house will be complete in 18 months, for example, is measurable. It’s a good starting point. As the homeowner I can start planning when to put my current house on the market or end my lease, when to get current utilities canceled and the new ones turned on, when to arrange for movers and so forth. But when is done really done? I’ve been told a house was done before the gas was hooked up. I was told a house was done, but movers wouldn’t unload their truck because the floors had been finished too recently. We need to get the detail to make important decisions. And as PMs we need to determine who will decide which measures to use and whether they make sense from a project perspective.

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Achievable. Achievable is another one of the squishy terms in the SMART acronym. It’s one of those words that means different things to different project stakeholders. I suspect I’m not the only PM to be told to “just make it happen.” Or “Where’s your can-do attitude?” I can certainly make almost any project happen, but at what cost? How much risk will the organization/sponsor/end users tolerate? Achieving an end quickly might mean making compromises. Who will make those decisions? What about trust and team dynamics? All these components of achievability need to be considered. And that takes time and lots of discussion.

Relevant. I’m not sure I understand what a relevant goal is. There are so many different stakeholders on our projects, some of whom do not find the project or its end product relevant at all. Hopefully it’s relevant to the organization, helping it meet its business objectives. But we all know that’s not always the case. I suspect many of us have worked on someone’s “pet project.” Or have had some stakeholder groups resist implementation. Or have managed projects highly relevant to end users but not to higher levels of management and vice versa. Getting agreement on what is relevant and how the project’s relevancy fits in with all the other projects is no easy task.

Time-bound. This usually means attaching a timeframe to the goal. I struggle with the difference between time-bound and all the other goals. I think they are intertwined. As a PM I worked on projects that were relevant only if they could be implemented in enough time to get goods from sourced locations to retail stores and on the shelves in time for the holiday season. Is that time-bound? Or relevant? Or I suspect, a bit of all the components of the acronym.

Which brings me to my original point. SMART goals are useful as a framework. But the key to time management success is going from a high-level overview to subsequently lower and lower levels of detail. We can certainly start with SMART. But we need to drill down to really achieve our goals.