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Project Management Warning Flag 3 – Frequent Re-baselining

Changing circumstances and constrained resources challenge the on-time, on-budget completion of every project. And in the real business world, some projects incur significant scope changes and others will fall behind schedule.


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Adaptive Project Framework is not your Father’s Project Management

We all agree that projects are unique. They will never happen again under the same set of circumstances or conditions. Given that, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect the management of those projects to also be unique?

The world doesn’t stand still just because you are managing a project. That is one reason why requirements cannot possibly be completely documented at the initiation phase of a project. Whatever management approach you choose to use for your project must be adaptable to changing conditions. Traditional project management models are poorly equipped to accommodate change.


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About the Author

Robert K. Wysocki, Ph.D., has more than forty years of experience as a project management consultant and trainer, information systems manager, systems and management consutant, author, and training developer and provider. His sixteen books on project and IT management include the PMI-recommended Effective Project Management, Fifth Edition (Wiley, 2009). In 1990, Robert founded Enterprise Information Insights, Inc. (EII), a consulting and training practice that specializes in helping large organizations run projects more effectively. His clients range from AT&T and Aetna to the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Wal-Mart, and Wells Fargo.

Decision-Making Warning Flag 1c – ad hominem: Personal, Not Issue Attacks

StrategyDriven Decision Making Article | ad hominem“An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: “argument to the man”, “argument against the man”) consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.

It is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.”

Ad Hominem
Wikipedia

The ‘Old Boys Club’

Product defects plague a company’s profitability; warranty repairs, returns, and lost sales robbing the organization of its already slim profit margins. Executives assembled an engineering team to assess product designs and material quality in hopes of identifying a root cause to the defective product issue. A junior member of the assessment team, a young, recently hired assembly line supervisor, identifies the lack of routine calibration of critical cutting tools as a contributor to the poor fit of key product components. The tenured company engineers on the team discount the supervisor’s observation because he’s too young and too new to know what’s really important. These senior engineers have just made an ad hominem argument to advance their position.

Ad hominem arguments are bias-based logic fallacies made to support business decisions every day. As with all logic errors, decision-makers fall prey to the appearance of reasonableness, especially when the assertion supports their desired course of action. Although difficult, recognizing and eliminating the use of ad hominem arguments in decision-making is absolutely necessary.


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Additional Information

Additional insight to the warning signs, causes, and results of logic errors can be found in the StrategyDriven website feature: Decision-Making Warning Flag 1 – Logic Fallacies Introduction.

Insights on organizational diversity and inclusion can be found in the StrategyDriven topical area: Diversity and Inclusion.

Organizational Accountability Best Practice 2 – Data Transparency

StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability Best Practice ArticleIs it still wrong if I don’t get caught? YES!

Organizations live and die by the decisions of executives and managers and the actions of employees. Therefore, individuals must be held accountable for their work that both helps and hinders goal achievement if the organization expects to thrive. This accountability can only happen, however, if the decisions/actions and associated results are visible. Data transparency helps create this visibility.


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Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice 3 – Continuing Education

StrategyDriven Succession and Succession Planning Best PracticeIt is simply not enough that individuals holding senior positions be highly experienced. The narrowness of early career positions and the limitations of time necessarily prevents an individual from being deeply experienced across the full range of functions within the organization. Thus, those relying purely on experience often lack an understanding of the broader spectrum of organization functions and opportunities that would help them be more successful in senior positions requiring multidimensional business understanding.


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