Dear PM Advisor,
We are documenting our
assumptions as we plan but we’re concerned. A lot of the assumptions we are
making won’t be proven true or false until we are halfway through the project.
Management has challenged these and told us they won’t approve the project
unless we have answers to all these questions.
What can we do?
Nervous in New York
Dear Nervous,
Project Planning is the process of predicting the future.
But management typically wants our predictions to be 100% accurate while we are
dealing mostly in hopes and dreams. We can never be 100% accurate in our
predictions so we use past data to try and improve our predictions.
Along the way we need to make assumptions to continue
planning. Since we don’t know which of two or more paths will prove to be
correct, we assume the most likely path to be true, treat that as a fact and
continue planning accordingly. This allows us to complete a project plan, along
with all the assumptions that got us to that point. It is extremely important that management buys
off on all these assumptions when they approve the project plan. If they disagree
with an assumption, they need to let us know. We’ll pick one of the other paths
as true and adjust the plan accordingly.
Some of these assumptions will not be proven to be correct
until the project is underway. That is a reality of life. Your management needs
to accept this reality and move on. The only way you can determine the validity
of this assumption is to proceed to the point where it will be proven. So they
need to either allow you to proceed or, if they are too unsure about the
project, they need to reject the project’s progress to the implementation
phase.
Good luck,
PM Advisor
Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com
No comments:
Post a Comment