Seven Laws of Projects
Social Web Strategies is a project company inspired by the same kind of thinking that Tom Peters discussed in his Fast Company piece about “The Wow Project,” and I’ve been doing project work for decades, so Matthew May’s article “The Seven Laws of Projects, and How to Break Them” resonates very clearly. These laws are about the very human dysfunction that can creep into project work. Many projects fail, but many more kind of succeed, but are broken because of these laws, which according to May exist
because our eyes are bigger than our tummies. We have delusions of success. We take on more than we should, routinely exaggerating the benefits and discounting the costs. We over-scope, over-scale, and over-sell. At the same time, we under-estimate, under-resource, and under-plan.
He follows with another paragraph about the fundamental truth of projects:
Projects—even small ones—are complex and challenging. Interests often compete and conflict. Individual performance varies widely. Continual shifts in direction and frequent stalls that slow momentum demand constant planning, adjustment, and improvisation—skills that only come with battle scars.
He then gives an example of a project that broke the laws – the Mars Pathfinder project – and succeeded in big ways, with a combination of creativity, obsessive testing, and incorporation of speed and flexibility into the design.
(I’d like to read, or maybe even write, a whole book on how to break the laws, with case studies!)
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Tags: Battle Scars, Break, Case Studies, Creativity, Decades, Flexibility, Fundamental Truth, Improvisation Skills, Incorporation, Mars Pathfinder Project, Momentum, Paragraph, projects work failure success creativity speed flexibility testing, Scope, Social Web, Success, Tom Peters, Tummies, Web Strategies, Wow Project
