Rethinking Our Paradigms Here’s the deal – what Saynisch et. al. are proposing is a fundamental shift if the way we think about project management. We are moving from Project Management First Order to Project Management Second Order. And it’s all about the shifting collective beliefs of our entire scientific body of knowledge.
Advance warning: this is a long post but I couldn’t quite figure out where to chop it down. So I cut to the chase for those of you in a hurry. Here’s the key point of this post. Project Management theories and processes should start incorporating these ideas:
- Instability is to be expected
- Crisis is an expected outcome
- Rapid evolutionary jumps provide a chance to evolve to a new level, employing the Principal of Chance
Let’s start the very beginning, a very good place to start A paradigm is a prevailing thought process that is widely held to be truth. Our project management processes developed out of the 19th century paradigms about the way that things changed over time. Darwin, for example, is famous for describing evolution as a definable process which exhibits the following characteristics:
Nature’s process is to move towards gradual mutation that would then be stable for a period of time until the next gradual mutation. That gradual mutation from one state to the next occurred through trial and error processes that would experience fine adjustments afterward. The article calls this ‘Evolution First Order’.
Human management systems developed around this paradigm as well. Saynisch calls this the ‘mechanistic concept’ where the world was seen to operate on a system of predictable cause and effect. One cause would lead logically to one line of action that would not significantly or rapidly change. Just like evolution, change would occur slowly, would be traceable to a logical cause within a framework that is predictable.
Project Management Process, or what Saynisch calls “Project Management First Order” is also based on this evolutionary paradigm that things evolve slowly, that they can be controlled in stable way, that we can manage shifts through mechanisms of control and fine adjustments to get to a final product. So we have a definable set of processes that proceed logically and help us keep a project stable. Just to rehash – the PMI version of these processes are:
- Initiation
- Planning
- Execution
- Monitoring and Control
- Closing
Project Management Second Order: The World is Not Predictable About 10 years ago, Saynisch et. al. decided to think about how new paradigms in the sciences might or should be applied to Project Management. Overall the thinking goes – if scientific paradigms eventually affect the way human management systems are organized, what effect do we think the new scientific paradigm will have on Project Management? You’ll have to read the article to look at the incredible diversity of ideas they evaluated, but the key idea was this: the world is not so predictable. In fact, Saynisch discusses Lazlo’s Grand Evolutionary Systems Theory (GEST or Evolution Second Order) which says that evolution as we know it (predictable, slow change) is only a sub part of the grand scheme of evolution. The bigger picture shows that unpredictable, chaotic splits occur which send evolution spinning off in one direction or another. These type of massive shifts are characterized by:
- Rapid jumping change and eruptions
- Unpredictable splits into completely different direction
- Creation of brand new formations
Scientists are observing this at both the quantum level (where science proves that yes atoms do split, but they split into new formations) and the macro level (where chaotic events like 9/11 or the fall of the stock market, or the rise of Google, display a rapid, unpredictable, jumping to the next level).
So if we follow the idea that a shift in the paradigms of natural science leads to a type of thinking that is played out in management sciences, then how will GEST play out in Project Management thinking?
Saynisch says that Project Management Second Order theories and processes, yet to be developed, will incorporate new theories of evolution that include rapid, unpredictable change, and new formations. But he’s not leaving us completely in the dark here, he has formulated a very cool model that I think has implications for preventing project failure.
It goes like this. Instead of assuming the whole project, from initiation to closing will progress in a linear, non-dynamic, relatively manageable way, assume that rapid, unpredictable change will occur in the transition from what Saynisch calls ‘phase’ to ‘phase’. In this picture from his article in the PM Journal he shows project phases Problem Analysis, Concept, Development, Implementation, Operation ( corresponding roughly to Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control and Closing).
Projects as an Evolutionary Process. by Manfred Saynisch
In his diagram “Projects as an Evolutionary Process”, the squiggly line represents the evolution of the project. Evolution First Order (manageable change) occurs within each phase. However, when the project changes from phase to phase (represented by the small black boxes), then Evolution Second Order (rapid, unpredictable change) is assumed to occur. Project Management Second Order incorporates both Evolution First Order and Evolution Second Order. It mimics Lazlo’s Grand Evolutionary Systems Theory.
He takes this one step further by asking us to redefine what we do during the evolutionary jumps in the project. We should start with the recognition that most of us think of risk in terms of the negative connotation – meaning that when a risk hits, it’s a bad thing. And we want to prevent it. Instead, Saynisch asks us to think about radical change as the expected outcome of process, incorporating the ‘principal of chance’ into our planning.
He asks the question: Are risk and crisis a contradiction?” He provides a graphic and explains: “On the left side of the figure (circle 1) we start within an equilibrium, a stable situation. We try hard to keep this state of equilibrium, with a great deal of effort or money. When a crisis emerges, the system turns into nonequilibrium and instability. A critical point has been reached, the point of bifurcation (circle 2). At this point we can end up successful (change and profit) or unsuccessful (realized risk, a loss or a catastrophe), as shown in circle 3. That is the principle of chance, elaborated in his diagram “Management of crisis - turn risks into changes!”
Management of crisis - turn risks into changes! by Manfred Saynisch
So when we assume that evolutionary jumps are part of the whole project management process and that those jumps contain the principal of chance, we wind up with a model that looks like this:
The principle of evolutionary ordering to a higher level - the cascade of bifurcations. By Manfred Saynisch
At significant phases, an expected crisis occurs (the circled danger points in the diagram). These danger points can become opportunities to propel an evolutionary jump forward. Or they can become the point at which the project heads into catastrophe. So one usable way to employ this theory is to make the following assumptions:
- Instability is to be expected
- Crisis is an expected outcome
- Rapid evolutionary jumps provide a chance to evolve to a new level, employing the Principal of Chance
How Do We Use This? What are the implications for us in practical terms? How would we act differently if we follow Project Management Second Order assumptions? Here are some ways I believe this will play out for us in our day to day management:
1. We’ll stop assuming we can adequately control the space between phases. This means that we’ll stop trying to plan milestones and baselines across a whole project. Lengthy five years schedules will be considered impractical, and significantly inaccurate enough to be unusable, given that we cannot plan for the non-linear trajectory of the evolutionary jump.
2. In order to get to an order of magnitude outside estimate of how long the project will take, we’ll probably develop an ‘evolutionary index’, some kind of measure to estimate the length of transition periods between phases.
3. We’ll start thinking of ways to capitalize and grow, and perhaps make up time, from the evolutionary jump. That is, while the jump may slow us down, in the end the chance for new formulations and ways of doing things may gain us increased time.
Thanks and Please Comment If you made it this far, you’re a trooper. Please read the full article here – its packed with info. What do you think of Project Management Second Order?
Wow! What a fabulous article! There’s a lot of really great information in there, and you’ve totally prompted me to dig into the original article.
A couple questions, then.
1. Do you feel planning out a lengthy project is still a valid endeavour? It may very well be that we can’t control the spaces between phases, but it still seems to me that we need a map, inaccurate though it may be. Part of our job it seems to me is to roll with the punches and when crisis hits, we alter our approach and communicate the change in course.
2. I like the notion of an “evolutionary index”. But I see nothing on how to reliably predict an “evolutionary jump” such that an index could be warranted. I wonder if an “evolutionary jump” is a risk that has the usual attributes of a risk that we know, but has a further attribute of a “tectonic” shift in thinking that tears at the project foundation (if that made sense).
The following is a diagram I made for one of my clients for a science video project. Basically, it shows the hierarchy of the project as various artifacts get signed off…let’s say you’re at the rough cut stage, and realize there’s a big change to the script that’s necessary…okay, so you have to go back down a few layers, and that’s going to require a reassessment of additional cost and time. Standard change request.
Link to Diagram>> http://bit.ly/bg8tQ0
At the very bottom of the diagram are two items, foundation science and organization. I’m guessing that a change to these layers, fundamental as they are, might constitute an “evolutionary leap”. An example might be if the science that lay behind the video were suddenly changed during the middle of the project (like the Large Hadron Collider found something groundbreaking that completely threw out the knowledge that went into the script). If that happened, and we were at the rough cut stage, the costs to fix the video would be huge, because pretty much everything would have to be redone. However, opportunities would also exist, as a team of people was already working together on a groundbreaking topic and could be first-to-market with something new, although the costs would be substantially higher than originally expected. Working in conventional terminology, a shift like that is a known risk that has a specific trigger.
So, first of all, have I sufficiently captured an example of an “evolutionary leap”? And if so, do we not already have protocols for dealing with them? Or have I missed the mark completely? If so I apologize and will crawl back under my rock.
Geoff.
PS: I can totally see you as Hermione grown up…but you’re way prettier than she is! I saw pics from the Tweetup!
Geoff, Thank you so much for your compliment and for a great response.
I think that the Evolutionary Jump can include managing for the base assumptions (see De-riskys Black Swan article http://bit.ly/7q0KA7) upon which we build our projects. But I also think the Jump can be something totally unexpected. A shift into a brand new direction, something like an unknown unknown.
So we manage for grand assumptions (like a shift in base technology) as risks, which is good practice. But we don’t assume the ‘crisis’. Risk and Assumptions management assumes linear progression – and stability of the baseline, or trying to stay as close to it as possible.
I think Saynisch is saying that non-linearaity is the nature of Evolution Second Order. So that would mean a huge baseline shift. But maybe that would be ok?
If we assume that – then we create much shorter projects, we get through a phase and then consider ourselves done for that project. Then start up a new project for what we now treat as the next phase.
Course – I could be getting this all wrong – you’ll have to read the article. But I love the discussioN!
Oh and on the eveolutionary index, a friend of mine is an economist and she told me about a risk calculation “The severity of the loss”; multiply the probabilty of the event happening times the absolute replacement costs of the project. So I’m thinking the evolutinary index could be similar, based on the probability of crisis * the cost of the project. So our probablity of crisis (between 0-100) would be assumed higher during phase transitions. Sort of like 90% probablity of complete evolutionary jump (crisis) during the phase shift.
Just ideas really.
Hrm. That’s actually a really good point. I’m thinking about some god-awful projects I’ve been a part of…really freakshows where nobody anticipated or could have known the level of horrendous complexity that lay beneath the surface. They resulted in crises of epic proportions, and a lot of pointing fingers and general ugliness. But of course, like you say, the crisis wasn’t specifically expected.
On IT projects, I usually do a re-baseline prior to the start of development, when more information has resulted in more accurate estimates…but this says to me, “this phase is ongoing…let’s get everyone back to the station, regroup, and debrief. Then we plan the next phase, combining what we knew before and what we know now.”
I can dig it, and think it’s a damn sight more realistic and achievable than planning out five years on a rapidly diminishing accuracy curve. I’d think managing stakeholder expectations would be the biggest hurdle. Funding still needs to be allocated and apportioned every year at budget time, and the usual headaches will apply.
That being said, a re-education of stakeholders about the vagaries of projects never hurts.
Geoff.
PS: I read the Black Swan article and loved it. I still haven’t read your original source for this post so I’m going to do that now! LOL (By rights I should have done it by now hehehe)
PPS: You should totally get down with your economist friend and come up with that index and submit it to a big magazine or something. I’d be right behind you shouting, “go Michiko!!!”
Stakeholders….its always the daggone stakeholders!!!! Thanks again Geoff