PMI places every project, in any sector, at any size on a single-dimensional axis, at one end lies the pure predictive, and at the opposite end lies the pure adaptive life cycles. What lies in between these end points are hybrids, a mixture of predictive and adaptive approaches, where the proportion of each depends on the chef’s secret recipe. PMI has two sauces to offer, one being incremental which defines the frequency of delivery, and the other being iterative which defines the degrees of freedom to change.
A predictive approach can be suitable if the project and product requirements can be defined, collected, and analyzed at the start of the project. Under such conditions, not many deliveries are expected, and change is very limited and under strict control.
When requirements are subject to a high level of uncertainty and volatility and are likely to change throughout the project then the development team should adapt to this environment from day one. This brings us to the adaptive end of the life cycle axis, where many deliveries are made in the quest for feedback which is hoped to shed some light on the uncertainties. Both the development team and the customer (or end user) have high degrees of freedom to change nearly every aspect of the project at any time. This implies re-planning literally all the time.
How a project is handled has many dimensions, but a wise project leader should consider one more, equally important, factor beyond project specific dynamics, the environment in which the project will be nurtured. Whether the project is run by an association or a company or a public agency, every organization, even departments under an organization have a unique climate and if the method used to develop the project is incompatible or even worse, competing with the values of the department or the organization then the project will face even more challenges.
Let’s have a look at the “Competing Values Framework” of Cameron and Quinn from the lens of project development approaches and try to understand what might well suit and what might cause friction. In their book “Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture”, Cameron and Quinn analyze the organizational culture on two dimensions. The first dimension differentiates effectiveness criteria that emphasize flexibility, discretion, and dynamism from criteria that emphasize stability, order, and control. The second dimension differentiates effectiveness criteria that emphasize an internal orientation, integration, and unity from criteria that emphasize an external orientation, differentiation, and rivalry.
They use “effectiveness” in the sense that, the successful achievement of organizational goals and outcomes that are appropriate to the organization’s specific context, values, and environment. In other words, effectiveness is about hitting the target, therefore any mismatch between the target and the approach that the organization is using to hit it would lead to ineffectiveness.
These two dimensions yield four quadrants, and the diagonal matches are said to be in competition. The internal orientation and stability quadrant, namely hierarchy, is in competition with external orientation and flexibility quadrant, which is adhocracy. In the same sense, the internal orientation and flexibility quadrant, the clan, is in competition with the external orientation and stability quadrant, the market.
In an organization that has innovation at the core of their culture, which translates into high responsiveness to new opportunities, requirements, technologies, and trends, planning and executing that plan thoroughly might cause serious friction. The culture would lean more towards starting as early as possible in the process of production and would be happier to learn as they do. If they are forced to think everything in advance, without even touching the product, they might feel humiliated. The opposite also holds true. In a highly structured and controlled environment where people feel comfortable when they know almost everything prior to their first step forward, a project where only the direction is known, and the rest is under a thick fog of uncertainty would face a severe resistance. A predictive life cycle project would face significant difficulties in an innovation and prepare-for-the-future driven culture. If the requirements or the product development approach has high degrees of uncertainty, then an order-, hierarchy-, and rules-based environment would be a very hard climate for this project to nurture.
Consider a high-paced project where smaller work packages need to be delivered one after another, and consecutive deliveries require different areas of expertise. This is an example of a highly incremental but less to no iterative project development environment. Imagine, for instance, a public safety authority launching a mobile emergency response app across ten different cities ahead of a major event. Each city requires a localized version due to differences in regulations and service integration. The core system stays the same, but each deployment must be delivered quickly and accurately, with minimal time for iteration. The project team needs to respond to this environment with set procedures to achieve speed, and small, efficient teams should form and adjourn to deliver the results. This project, besides its technical and administrative challenges, is something that people need to get used to if they have worked in a clan culture, namely interpersonal relations form the basis of the work environment and culture like in a family. Such organizations lean more to ad hoc responses to requirements, doing what the situation requires rather than relying on set rules. Their most valuable asset is their knowledge about the other team members’ abilities, they know whom to call when they need something. They perform in their own style which might slow them down in their responses, however they eventually suit to the needs of the project.
If the project is about developing a new technology that nobody has ever even dreamt of, than there is a high uncertainty and all the team can rely on is the ability to tap the expertise of the others at the correct time and correct place. This type of project environment is nothing close to incremental, since the team don’t know exactly where they are going, then they cannot build the output piece by piece. They rather iterate the methods they have expertise on until they reach the result. In such a R&D environment, market type of organizational cultures would face significant challenges. The set procedures, rules and stability cannot do any good for this uncertain, highly volatile, ambiguous environment. The market type organizations are built to respond effectively to changing market conditions with set procedures and individual talent.Being a project leader is not a straightforward endeavor that excelling and applying the ten knowledge areas is sufficient. That forms the basics of project management, but the advancement would lead to much narrower passages, and organizational culture is one of those scary, maybe the narrowest of all the passages.
