Not all critical tasks are equal!!

Every now and then it is great when someone shines a new light on a problem. In this instance I have connected with another linkedin member, Bruce Nagy, and he connected me with his website. I have looked at a lot of it, "got" some of it and "grabbed" by other bits.

I won't try to to cover all of Bruce's propositions as I am sure I would not do them justice, but I wanted to share the piece that set me back on my heels and has me thinking again.

Let me set the scene.

I have lamented before that project management in the world I inhabit has become dominated by Gantt charts and we have lost mos if not all of the PERT and crtical path analysis I was trained with. Indeed I was talking with a long time friend and commented that it was a long time since I had heard anyone even used the term "critical path", let alone use it. He concurred.

For those not familiar with critical paths, they are the chain of tasks/activities that define the end point of a project. The importance is that any slippage in one or more of those tasks will have a direct impact on the end date.

What Bruce's work suggests is that one assesses each of those tasks using a simple approach; an assessment that can prioritise them against the risk they will slip thus enabling you to optimise where you place your attention and supporting/mitigative efforts.

It is captured in this paper  that is freely available from Bruce's website. the key piece, at least to me, is as follows.

• Look at each task and rate it against two scales marked from 0 -10, one for capability and the other for motivation. (see panel for assessment criteria)

• Having assessed and rated the tasks one has some akin to the classic BCG 2x2 matrix. 

• It does not take a rocket scientist to see that the tasks with "low capability / low motivation" are at the most serious risk of slippage and worthy of a project manager's urgent attention.

• The startegies for dealing with activities falling in "low capability / high motivation" and "high capability / low motivation" will differ, but enables effective focus of effort. 

• Of course "high capability / high motivation" still carry a degree of risk - that is the nature of project work - but one should have more confidence in their delivery to plan.

As I said this has set me thinking again. I  would argue that I do this intuitively, but also recognise that a systematic approach is valuable for consistency and scalability ie getting otehrs to do it too. It is also valuable as away of explaining to stakeholders and sponsors why you are concerned about aspects and what they warrant their attention too.

My challenge to myself is to see how and where I can use this in my current work.

I am sure I have undersold Bruce's insights, and that his ideas go further and have far wider applicability, so I commend you to have a look and assess it for yourself.