Context Matters

The most powerful weapon in chess is to have the next move. – David Bronstein

My Dad owned a heavy, green and white stone chess set. The board was heavy, the alternating checkerboard marred by years of play and handling as he moved across the country and back again. Each piece was hand-carved, the regal King and Queen, the solid Rook and leaping Horseman, the humble pawns lined up in their even rows across the playing field. Every piece has a unique role to play in the game, their ability to move is limited to specific patterns across the squares. “Chess is a game of strategy,” my Dad would explain. “You must imagine how your opponent will respond to your actions. You need to think several steps ahead. Choose your moves based on the strength of each piece on the board.” 

Then he would destroy me in the game. He always knew my moves before I played them.  He anticipated every line of attack.  He could see the full context of the battle, while my vision was limited to the two or three pieces in direct combat. My Dad would beat me at chess, my Mom would beat me at chess, my brother would beat me at chess. Today, my teenage son refuses to play against me because apparently, I’m “not even challenging.” 

High quality Project Managers exhibit all the key chess skills. They know and appreciate the unique abilities of every player on the team. They are adept at positioning complementary resources in combinations that make them greater than if they were alone. Project Managers anticipate where the game is going, strategically prepare for the future while simultaneously executing in the moment. Even though I’m terrible at chess, I appreciate the challenge because the skills required resonate in me.  Good Project Management requires both tactical and strategic thinking.

If you apply a chess mindset to our core project management fundamentals, Scope, Timeline, Budget, and Communication, then Project Management can start to add strategic value to a project team.  

Scope expands from simple straightforward documentation of requirements to active engagement and an initiative-taking response to requirement evolution. We don’t just write it down once and leave it, we understand how through the course of the project the scope may grow, shrink or change form.  We can step back from a singular focus on achieving a goal, to realizing what the goal means in the bigger picture, wider angle lens of our client. There are implications to scope change that must also be addressed; if baseline assumptions are no longer valid then all subsequent understanding must be revisited as well. 

Next, timeline management becomes an embodied action statement. Solid Project Managers go beyond the baseline, they are capturing actual data live and in real time as the project unfolds. They are inserting tasks, increasing granularity, reconfirming relationships, and challenging durations up and down the critical path. The Gantt chart becomes a living model, a projection of where the project is headed.  Project Managers navigate the team through a continuous loop of plan, do, check, act. Each iteration becomes increasingly accurate as every detail is planned, executed, confirmed, and updated; subsequently cascading down to each following step in the process. Change is identified and reflected, the impact to the end objective made visible and transparent.

Just as scope and timelines must reflect our reaction to change, budgets must be reconciled. There will be signals, and close tracking throughout the project will reveal the trajectory long before you reach the final stretch. Like a golfer can read the green, a Project Manager using their tools and fundamentals will be able to see these patterns across the project financials, resources, and time. How much energy are we consuming from specific support functions? Are the bills greater than we anticipated? Are these activities taking longer than they should? While the trends are important to see and recognize, the Project Management superpower lies in understanding the driving forces underneath. Why are these patterns emerging, and what influence do we have to reshape them to our aim?

Each of these three Project Management Fundamentals; scope, timeline, and budget demands that the fourth be present in equal measure. No longer can we simply inform, pouring out information like water from a garden hose into the project. Now we must collaborate.  We bring the right folks to the table.  We ask questions, seek to understand positions, challenge assumptions, and negotiate middle ground when necessary. Here the Project Manager’s role is not only to state the facts, but also to set the context, frame the issue and invite input. 

Sometimes, we must sit quietly, patiently listening until the noise falls away. We are translators, hearing, and restating, summarizing, and confirming. If healthy conflict is not your thing, these project aspects can be uncomfortable. We don’t like to sit in the uncomfortable dissonance of change, but we must.  Project Managers are at their strongest when these moments become points of collaboration.

Early that morning, my inbox chimed with an incoming email, a Client’s brief note, “We need to generate more data. Please insert an additional study into our scope.”  “Super!” I think to myself, more work for us means a stronger partnership, a lasting commitment between the organizations. They must be pleased with the work to date if they are bringing us more activity. I add the topic to the next day’s agenda and celebrate with a chocolate from my desk jar. It doesn’t occur to me that there may be broader implications to this request. I don’t see a need to forewarn any of the team members ahead of the meeting.  Instead, I inadvertently put everyone on the spot when I introduce the topic straightaway as the meeting opener. Six wide, deer-in-headlights expressions turn my direction; unprepared and barely masked frustration simmering.

Immediately, there is a spiral in the conversation. Our technical team members are rattling off questions more quickly than I can type notes. Everyone is talking at once, hypothesizing about the nature of the study, the materials required, the data that will be collected. The Client is enthusiastic, insistent on the requirement. My internal team is reeling but catching up quickly. Before the end of the conversation, we’ve identified a significant quantity of material required and the Client has committed to manufacturing it immediately, so that it will be ready for shipment to our warehouse as early as next week.  It isn’t clearly stated, but we all assume that the data from this study will gate our upcoming manufacturing batch, but we don’t really consider how long it will require the analytical team to produce and validate the results. Of course, that Subject Matter Expert is conveniently out of the office today, so we resolve to follow-up with him later but assume there will be no issue. 

Only there is. I’m still feeling pretty confident after the meeting ends, and I set-up updating my Project Management tools to reflect this new information that very afternoon.  I draft up a scope amendment, detailing out the requirements of the additional study in terms of anticipated costs. After checking in with Supply Chain, I learned that while the Client is providing the main material, there is an insufficient supply of vials on hand. An order would be required as soon as possible, and we should assume several weeks before we can take delivery. 

The cloud of excitement is starting to thin; my energy level is slowing. Those vials aren’t cheap, but I assume this is required and I add them into the scope document just the same.  That timeline for delivery isn’t quite what we wanted either.  So, I pull up the project Gantt chart and begin to insert the new tasks, the study, the material receipt, the vial order, and anticipated arrival. Of course, another study means another protocol, and a report once the final analytical data is confirmed. I add in these additional tasks and their standard durations, a week here for document review, another week there for approval. Soon the extra work is completely incorporated, and the full picture takes shape. This simple additional study, with the planning assumptions we’ve just discussed, will add a potential six months to the overall program critical path and nearly half a million dollars.  Is that what the Client intended? 

At this point it is late in the afternoon, and I’m regretting my celebratory treat this morning.  With each email, each conversation, it’s becoming increasingly clear that I’ve gravely misunderstood the situation. This isn’t a simple study addition we are discussing; this is a scope change resulting in a significant increase in cost and timeline delay.  I decided to call the group back together first thing the next morning, before we took too many steps down this new critical path that we can’t turn back. 

I’m nervous and I don’t sleep well.  Like a prosecutor laying out the facts of a case, I prepare a PowerPoint slide summarizing the Client request and every associated planning assumption; a staccato list reduced to the most concise language possible. The meeting begins and I thank the team for joining at such short notice. I ran down the list quickly, confirming as I went that each point is correct. All heads around the table are nodding, I confirm alignment with the Client team on the phone. “Yes, Melissa. This summary is consistent with our requirements and yesterday’s discussion.”  Okay, I move to the second slide, which displays a summarized version of our project Gantt chart. The newly inserted activities are highlighted in green, so they are clearly visible, nearly jumping off the screen and into our eyeballs. There is a call out box to the right on the screen, another bulleted list summarizing the anticipated additional costs.

The team in the room with me is quiet. The Client on the line hasn’t spoken.  So, I prompted them. “We will be glad to do this work, we are capable and see the value of your request. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share with you now, before we get started, the impact on your overall project cost and timeline.  Is this acceptable to your program?” 

Sometimes this type of conversation goes one way, oftentimes it goes another. Every single time, I receive a call afterwards that says a version of,” Wow, how did you see that? How could you understand those potential ramifications so quickly? Thank you for identifying the implications and initiating the conversation.”  As the Project Manager, the go/no go decision isn’t ours to make, but it is our job to ensure that the decision maker is well informed of the potential consequences one way or the other.  My fundamental project management tools give me visibility, and quickly, so that leaders can be decisive and maintain focus on the overall project objectives. This is the value that a Project Manager, thinking strategically, brings to a project through drive, consistency, and focused application of the project management core fundamentals.

There are situations where the conversation becomes combative. Stakeholders often have personal ties to specific milestones or goals. There may be real money on the line in the form of an incentive bonus, or promotion potential based on a project’s success. For these reasons, and countless others you may never be privy to, stakeholders will challenge the projection. Be prepared, answer objectively, adapt assumptions if presented with new information. Stay calm. It isn’t personal, it’s rarely about you at all.  Just like you, they want to find a path to success. Welcome their probing questions and be curious, consider their perspectives, values, experiences. Why might this particular individual question the estimated duration of this specific step?

Despite what we might prefer, there really are very few absolutes in planning. Many constraints can be alleviated by adding resources, money, or time, or more generally by just prioritizing the resources, money, and time already available to a project. As the Project Manager, you are helping the team contemplate the wide spectrum of possibilities that may happen because of their decisions, action or even inaction. Every project is like a game of chess in this way, each player is projecting out from this point how the project might unfold. Skilled players can leverage their knowledge, training, and experience to look further out into the future than their lesser experienced peers. Project Managers support those assessments by building logical models, visual tools, and objective data to help all stakeholders assess from the same base source of facts. Skilled Project Managers let go of their personal attachment to the specific outcome and instead focus on building the best, most accurate, most intuitive, most reliable model for decision makers to rely upon. Checkmate. 

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