TL;DR Project crises follow non-linear pathways. Anecdotally, system crises, such as a system outage of unknown cause or origin, follow a non-linear hysteresis curve. During these crises, teams are riding the “Gradients of Terror” and experiencing the “Hysteria of Hysteresis”. Experiencing a Project Crisis If you’ve been a project manager for any reasonable amount of…

TL;DR If we want to be better at project management, we must handle the impacts of non-linear dynamics in our projects. Non-linearity is unavoidable at multiple levels: cognitive, human interaction, and technology. Right now, we don’t do a good job. In fact, we often make things worse. But there are ways…

In my recent post, First-principles thinking on Project Management, I laid out the case for needing generic and scalable management principles that can apply across any project, regardless of size, complexity, materials or organisation. We need these to cut through the complex and arbitrary set of approaches and toolsets that…

Two Simple Questions The two simplest questions in project management are: 1. “What is a project?”, and 2. “How do I manage a project successfully?” Why are these simple questions so hard to answer? Look no further than the dominant paradigms. The Deepening Gulf between Project Management Paradigms Currently, we have three significant paradigms of project management, each fundamentally incompatible…

productivity measures that focus on units of time or labour are anti-agile - they are anti-knowledge work generally as you've pointed out. any project should be measured by effectiveness not efficiency. efficiency can only be assessed when the following are known and the causal relationship between them is also known: …

In complex and dynamic projects, it’s hard to filter out the noise and focus on just one element. You might want to diagnose some particular problem with a temporary narrow and deep perspective. In the film “Predator”, the alien’s helmet has an enhanced viewport with filters to look deep into…

The daily life of a project manager, it seems, is to broker discussions about what features we can or can’t add to the system before launch. In part, this is an aspect of having a single large deployment. But let’s not get sidetracked on that debate. The Endless Debate The zone of the…

We all know Samuel L Jackson is an outstanding actor and has played some of the most memorable roles ever shot on film. But did you also know that he is a badass project manager? I don’t know if he worked as a project manager as his night job when…

If you’re working solo or in a small team, you either do everything yourself or get help. If you’re getting help, then there are many options like volunteers or contractors. One common option is hiring from an online platform like Freelancer.com or Upwork.com. There are many of these available. I’m…