Bulldozer00's Blog

Why is it that big government and big industry continue to cling to an archaic planning method that clearly doesn’t work. History has repeatedly shown that the Big, One Time Planning (BOTP) method is rapidly becoming more obsolete as the pace of change accelerates. The top half of the figure below shows what has been, and continues to be done for Big, Complex, Multi-technology, Product (BCMP) development jobs.

By definition, BCMPs are hairballs that no one fully understands at the outset. As time ticks forward and the effort progresses, learning naturally occurs and new knowledge is discovered and accumulated. This new found knowledge validates the invalidity of the golden BOTP plan. Strangely but surely, as THEE plan becomes more disconnected from reality, no one says or does anything until the mismatch gets in your face. Driven by fear, no one wants to be the first one to step up and announce that the emperor needs a new wardrobe. Eventually, shoddy work and buggy, failure prone components become visible and impossible to ignore. Finger pointing and defensiveness take over. It’s sick city until the crap gets delivered or the whole shebang is canceled in a highly publicized hatefest.

The bottom of the figure shows an alternative to the toxic BOTP method. It’s called: Planning To Continuously Replan (PTCR). In this method, everyone develops a shared understanding at the outset that PTCR will be used to increase (but not guarantee) the chance of project success. In PTCR, replanning is done at necessary points in the effort. How does a project manager know when one of these  necessary points in time has occurred? By rolling up his/her sleeves, getting close to the team and, most importantly, personally monitoring the intermediate work products that are being created in real-time. Trust but verify. There’s no distancing and disconnecting from the project like the bozo executors of the BOTP technique do.

It’s my guess that BOTP will continue to be used by vendors and purchasers of BCMPs in the future. Because of the fear of change and the importance of maintaining (a false) image of infallibility, the comfort of the same-old same-old is always preferred to the uncomfort of the new. This, in spite of the ineffectiveness of the same-old same-old. As Mark Twain said: “I love progress, it’s change that I hate”.