Project Management Decisions, Decisions, Decisions (Principles)

Accepting the fact that the project management plan will change in unknown ways is part of managing projects. The fact that change happens is the reason to put a plan in place for making decisions. Decision-Making occurs in traditional, iterative, agile, extreme and lean project management methods. Putting a team based decision making process in place will make achieving project objectives easier.

I am a project manager which means I'm accountable for the delivery of the product, service or result of the project I'm managing. I am accountable for delivering the objective based on some group of constraints such as time, budget, scope, technology, risk or resource. I work with the project team (including sponsorship and stakeholders) to outline the project management plan that will accomplish the goals and objectives of the effort. I am always aware that the plan I put in place today will change due to realized risks, unforseen opportunities, a stakeholder changing their mind, or changes in the market conditions. Approaching decisions in a similar manner throughout the project helps stabilize project outcomes.

I thought I'd do some research for those of you who like to have a few places to look for more information. In the book Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, Harold Kerzner dedicates a chapter dedicated to Trade-Off Analysis. In the chapter he describes, in detail, a six step process. In the book Implementing Six Sigma, Forrest W. Breyfogle III outlines a six step process for problem solving. Rober K. Wysocki suggests a six step process in his book Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme. Answers.coms' site on decision making outlines a six step process and businessballs.com outlines a six step process as well. Even though each of their approaches has six steps each process is a bit different. The good news is that all contain the same basic principles. The main reasons for the differences is the emphasis they put on the different problem solving principles or characteristics. I also took a look at the approach outlined in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), an ANSI standard for project management processes. It also contains a six step process which is similar to the other processes sited. Because the PMBOK is considered by many to be the standard to follow I've summarized the process they suggest as: define the problem, generate alterative solutions, select the "best" alternative, make sure you have key stakeholder participation and commitment for the selected alternative, conduct post-implementation lessons learned, and review how well the solution met the need. Rather than suggesting 4, six, 9, or more steps I'd like to outline the principles or characteristics that a problem solving process should contain.

Principle 1
Know who decides what and who should be involved in the decisions. Nothing is worse than getting to the answer without the right people in the room making the decision. Determine who has accountability for which types of decisions and the breadth of control that the project manager, stakeholders, sponsors and team members have. You don't want the business team members making architectural decisions and you don't want your architect making business decisions. Although this is a rediculous example I've seen worse things happen. Avoid disasters with clear decsion making roles.

Principle 2
Make sure that everyone is working on the same topic. I've been in meetings where there is a lot of passioned debate about something without defining what the debate is about. The English language is a challenge and determining the issue, question, or opportunity is critical for the rest of the process. It is the garbage in, garbage out notion. If we aren't in agreement to what we are working on there is no point in going further.

Principle 3
Facts are better than instinct and fiction. Don't get me wrong, instinct is awesome and uncovers and resolves a host of issues. The underlying problem with instinct is that it is usually based on some truth, some fact. It is important to know what the facts are and what the facts are not. The facts will help define and solve most items that cross a project managers desk. An important follow on is to use the facts that are available TODAY. Performing analysis is helpful and provides factual information and it can chew up time and dollars pretty quickly. Be aware of how quickly the decision needs to be made and the potential effort necessary to bring the decision to closure. Some decisions feel like a project all by themselves. Be Wary of Decision Scope Creep.

Principle 4
Breadth before Depth. Dream of the possibilities, think outside of the box, blue sky and open mindedness. The team doesn't get to stay in this space for long so making sure it happens is important.

Principle 5
You can have only one. Whatever the solution is going to be, it has to win in some way. The decision making tools for coming up with a winner vary widely and can be statistically oriented or simple vote oriented. Whatever the tool is, the team should agree to what the decision criteria are and that the solution "won".

Principle 6
The team (project team members, stakeholders and sponsorship) must actively support the solution. Enough said.

Principle 7
Plan the implementation. The solution must have an implementation plan which should ensure that your solution is indeed viable. It doesn't have to be a formal plan unless the solution complexity warrants it.

Principle 8
Know what you implemented worked. Review the solution after it is implemented solution should be reviewed to see if it did what it should have done. The same principle holds true for a project. It ensures success.

Principle 9
Remember what you decided and why. Hind sight is always 20/20. If you have the facts about the process, the alternatives and the decision you will be able to provide yourselves with insights when similar questions arise.

Principle 10
Nothing is ever set in stone. Whatever the process for making decisions is, it can always change based on team, project or organization need. Don't get stuck.

The number of steps that your decision-making process has aren't as important as the principles on which the process is developed. These ten principles will help ensure that your decisions are built upon solid ground.

Ride On, Manage On