An Agile Software Development team works iteratively — they write some code or make a UI design model, get fast feedback on it, improve it and add to it. Some people claim that 3D printing and other rapid prototyping methods allow hardware developers to work just as iteratively. But they are wrong, for two reasons.
Good Decisions Can’t Be Scored
Why Numbers Lead You Astray in Your Most Important Decisions
When my partner and I were driving through the Luxembourg countryside, we enjoyed the beautiful sights: scenic mountains with hilltop castles and lush forests. As night began to fall, the fog descended. At first, it was beautiful. Then visibility became more and more restricted. Relaxation turned into apprehension as we realized the increasing danger on […]
To Accelerate Net Zero, Commit Early but Decide Late
My First Article in Fast Company I just published the most important article I’ve ever written — for Fast Company — and I would appreciate some help amplifying it — and your feedback on it: “A growing number of major companies are following the lead of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to set aggressive targets for […]
Too Many Key Decisions or Knowledge Gaps?
Find Your NUDs to Find Your Focus
In the last two years, my thinking about Key Decisions has changed. I used to think that teams needed to address all their high impact / high unknown Key Decisions and that teams could be trusted to come up with the right ones within a few cycles of replanning, even if they struggled during the integration […]
Are Gantt Charts Evil?
In March of 2021, Denmark announced that that they had approved the construction of an artifical island to supply offshore wind power. The island will collect power from offshore wind turbines to transform and transmit it to the Danish electrical grid. The first stage won’t be operational until 2033. A huge project like this will probably have an overall project director, and an army of project managers working on the pieces of the puzzle. Although project management is waste by definition, it is also the epitome of necessary waste for a massive infrastructure project like this.
But this project also has a lot of unknowns. It’s the first time anything like this has been attempted. The group needs solutions that have not yet been invented. If the team attempts to run the entire project with traditional project management tools, they are likely to disappoint. According to researchers at Oxford University, large-scale projects like this have only a 0.2% chance of being delivered on time, on budget with the expected performance.