Cool stuff: Different Work | Your Big Adventure | The Fish Pond
When the path of hurricanes is predicted, maps are used that show us the areas that might be hit. The further away in the future, the larger the potential area is. The weather forecasts get more uncertain if we go from one day, three day to weekly forecasts.
I love those hurricane maps. Not the hurricanes. The maps.
As I am a sucker for visualizations that include maps, I was really excited when the link between Hurricane maps and uncertainty was pointed out to me on the excellent Herding Cats blog.
For me the purpose of a Hurricane Map is to facilitate a discussion with people that are not necessarily into the Project Management profession and language as, well, PMs are. This adds to the notion of being on a Big Adventure, traveling through unknown territory, with a rag tag crew.
On a white board draw an arrow that indicates the path you plan to follow. On both sides from the this arrow, draw a line that start from the same point as the start of the arrow. This is your hurricane map. The further away you are in the future, the larger the gap between the outside lines.
Together with your workshop participants you add keywords from things that may influence the path of the project. Issues you are not sure about. The performance of a system, the acceptance of users. Try to place them as in a chronological order if possible.
This is an awareness exercise. Getting people into an “uncertainty” mindset.
For each of the issues named, you can talk about what “not being on the planned path” means. Discuss worst case and best case scenarios.
The Hurricane Map is part of a change/project management strategy focused on culture and using an “adventure travel” metaphor. For more maps and exercise, visit my list of Shrinkonian exercises.
Bas, this is a very creative idea and is practical. I would add a buterfly somewhere to indicate the complexity of project management and that the flap of a butterfly might generate a hurricane.
Thanks Ali, that is a cool idea. You can draw an image of the butterfly somewhere at the base of the arrow use that as a place to list possible sources of the uncertainties. The stuff that starts the hurricane?
Check out Steve McConnell’s famous Cone of Uncertainty poster.
http://www.construx.com/Page.aspx?nid=438
Hey Ray, Thanks! That is an awesome collection of images and charts. Appreciated.
Bas,
did you happen to see Steve Blank’s post today? (http://bit.ly/pAUF1T). In some ways, you and Steve are both presenting ideas about setting a direction, but still remaining flexible and adaptable.
Steve presents his ideas from the perspective of an entrepreneur, you’re presenting from the perspective of a project manager within a large organization.
The key take away I got from Steve’s post is:
“One of the key distinctions between an entrepreneur and an operating executive is an entrepreneur’s almost seamless ability to change course in the face of changing circumstances. Versus an operating executive’s intense execution focus on a plan. To be a world class entrepreneur, you must learn to combine both.
My formal definition of a startup is a temporary organization in search of a scalable and repeatable business model. Any original well-thought-out plan quickly becomes irrelevant. (this is true from startups, war, love and probably life too.)
You must be able to quickly separate the crucial from the irrelevant. There are an infinite number of possible paths, the ability to succeed is the ability to identify a scalable, repeatable path from those which are less so.”
Maybe project management is a form of “hurricane mapped” entrepreneurship?
Hey Andrew, thanks for the reference. No I didn’t read it before, but it is right on the mark. I am talking about smaller teams that need to be flexible, innovative, resilient to get a job done. Plan B is my middle name! And C, D, …
I like the “hurricane mapped” entrepreneurship.You know, PM is basically centered around some core conversations teams need to have with themselves and their environment (stakeholders): done, road to done, how do you know how far you are…. etc. Orginally I thought that agile was about this, but I isn’t. I tried Resilient PM …
http://www.projectshrink.com/resilient-pm-4671.html
But that didn’t catch on
So I would say, that resilient project management is a form of “hurricane mapped” entrepreneurship.
The weird thing is: it makes perfect sense to me.
Thanks for the stretch!
Bas,
you maybe onto something. I’m not sure “hurricane mapped” PM is a marketable title, but maybe a “Directed Storm Approach to Project Success.”
I do like the “cone” analogy, but maybe you could turn that on it’s side. Have you ever thought about paddle steamers and how the paddle wheels drove ships forward?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddle_steamer
Is there a way to describe projects driving a company forward the same way a paddle wheel drove a ship into new waters? The captain has to make adjustment, change directions and project teams have to deal with different environmental factors and storms and so on, but it could be a useful analogy.
ey Andrew,
Awesome idea!
Let me take it and run with it! I’ll be another post for sure.
Appreciated.
Cheers,
Bas
Talking about discussions, in ten minutes from now I shall have uploaded a new presentation on slideshare on “Slide Share Butterfly Effect”. I show by example how discussions initiated ideas including my joint E-book with Bas de Baar on “Fish Pond- The Management of Complexity”
For people interested: here is the link:
http://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/slide-share-butterfly-effect
Bas,
Great blog, in world of words and charts I think your sketches explain things nicely, and the hurricane map is a good example of that.
Simon
Hey Simon, thanks for the very kind words! Appreciated!