News from the Risk Doctor

David Hillson writes here about emerging risk i.e. risks we haven't seen before.

No Sponsor no Project!

This simple rule should be everywhere, because even if you get a steering committee the fact is that if everybody is responsible nobody is responsible!

The rule is the acid test if anyone even bother to back you and your project up. If no one in management is ready to stand up for you it will be uphill - and you should back off.

The rule is in itself a good argument for not starting up projects: "If no one will pull the lead jersey we better not choose this project."

Project or Change?

What will happen if we drop the word Project and replace it consistently by the word change?

Then we would hear phrases like:
• we'd like you to lead a major change
• I just started a major change
• my change is in crisis
• we keep a change meeting this afternoon
• I have just finished a big change
• we have many changes for the time being
• etc.

I wonder if it would give much more focus on what it's all about - deployment and use - the change that is ultimately needed? We go from focus on the product to the utility - it is smart or what?

Try to chew a little on the sentences and try to create your own - funny isn’t?

Sincerely

Finn Svenning
Change Manager

What your parents didn't dare tell you ...

The excellent BRO-blog writes:
• 78 percent of Swedish drivers believe they drive better than the average motorist.
• 94 percent of American professors believe that they teach better than average.
• 82 percent of French men believe they are better lovers than the average Frenchman.

So: You're mean! and your parents probably didn't tell you!
It's comedy at a high level. Everybody thinks they're above average. We are just not.

This is perhaps the main reason that we do not have enough focus on getting better and we ignore more or less obvious invitations to change.

So let the day today be a humble day!

When do we learn from billion losses?

When the Dansih police now scrap the project Polsag it is a repetition of several public scandal projects with the following baking recipe (for free use):

1. In order to manage the supplier this time we specify the system even more precisely than we have ever done before
2. We send the contract (for we must in the EU) to get the cheapest price
3. Suppliers give offer that barely make any profit for them
4. We choose the cheapest supplier (for otherwise there will probably be ballad)
5. We begin
6. We become wiser about what we really should have asked for from the start
7. We get expensive offers on the changes, for now, the supplier must have the profits home
8. We get annoyed about the prices and cooperation becomes strained
9. Independent consultants are called in for advices like ‘better management’ and ‘tight control’ with no practical usefulness at all
10. Now repeated steps 6 to 9 in a few years until everyone is so tired of everything and the budget is blown up many times that we continue to step 11
11. We cancel the project, find somebody to blame and start a new project in Step 1

Mr. 3Angle assaulted

Optimized schedules

Schedules should always be examined by shortening duration by adding more resources to see if the earlier value creation is worth the effort. It might be a little over the top to build a completely new house with garden ready to move into in only two hours – but that’s what you can enjoy here on this Youtube clip I just found again after many years.

I did some calculation on the around 250 people involved and found that this project uses less resources than a normal house building project. But of course you have to consider the many months of planning and not to forget the rehearsal they all did some days before!!