High Pressure Front

As I'm writing this, I'm thinking about the weather. 

Yesterday, it was 63 degrees and sunny and beautiful.  This morning, I woke up to four inches of snow and temperatures in the teens. 

It makes you wonder if Mother Nature is letting her geeky nephew, Clarence, intern in the weather department without adult supervision.  But we're Iowans.  We're hardy and resilient to change when it comes to climate.

Are your projects as resilient as Iowans are to changes in the environment? 

As we know, in business, things can change on a dime.  And while we joke about the weather ("wait five minutes; it'll change"), we have less of a sense of humor when it comes to our projects.  As Jim Garr writes in his Technology Services blog:

The real value here I think is to anticipate that change and then position yourself (in this case IT staff and technology inside MDC) to respond. Put the right people in the right places as much in advance of the "need" as you can...and the resulting impact will be a much smoother transition for ...almost everyone.

That's a challenge for many of us in the technology world...while many will profess that they embrace change and welcome it....I can tell you first hand that sometimes those words are nothing more that lip service. IT staffers as much as anyone else can be less than enthusiastic about being resilient in the face of change.

Jim has a point.  When I'm working with clients who are a little further along with their process maturity (i.e., they don't cry foul at the slightest hint of project rigor), I suggest setting up a "change triage process" in tandem with handling regular change control procedures. 

Do this during the planning phase, so you are not reacting to change while it is happening.  For those changes which come up suddenly, completely blindside you, and need immediate attention, try the following:

• Establish your triage decision-makers.  Who are the people who can and should make quick decisions, and have the ability to read the signs to make the best decision for the project and its stakeholders?
• Determine whether the change is controllable (can you avert or delay the change).  If you can buy yourself more time, then do it.  Move more controllable changes to your normal change control procedures.  Only critical environmental changes should move onto your triage team.
• Determine how the change affects the scope and the schedule (note, I did not say cost).  Then think about the dollar value of the additional effort to make it happen, or the lost dollar value of a delay (i.e., opportunity cost of being late to market).  This is your triple constraint discussion.
• Write up the tasks that need to happen in the first day and the first week.  Make assignments and set people loose to make them happen.  Then use this time to build out your other tasks to handle the change.  It may be that a revised project plan must be one of your first deliverables; however, on some changes, you will know what must be done before formal planning can occur.  Don't hold up a critical change because of the planning.
• Keep the decision-making centralized to as few people as possible, but pull in subject matter experts to give you the information you need.  If you are under the gun, the last thing you need is decision-making by committee.  Bring in your experts, but make the final call.
• Communicate to your stakeholders what is happening and why.  Don't leave your team or your customers in the dark.  Most people are understanding of changes that are outside your control.  What they want to know is that you are still in charge.

Doing these proactive steps can help you adapt quickly when the environment doesn't play nice.  Now I need to go shovel snow.

Carpe Factum!