Project Toys

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I generally do not endorse products on this blog, and this posting is not an endorsement per se, but more of a "heads up" because in the PMO there are always a lot of documents and things to write, many to a multi-lingual project team. Here is a tool that might be of use.

Text Processing "toy": I was attracted to a recent headline that in the Microsoft "Power Toys" suite of tools for Windows11 (*) is a capability -- "Advanced Paste" -- that provides automated text translation and other "processing" in the "cut and paste" function. (All aimed at keeping the PC relevant I would guess)

According to CoPilot, Advanced Paste has these functions:

1. Functionality: With Advanced Paste, you can select the desired text format for pasting, but it goes beyond simple copy-paste. Here’s what you can do:

   • Summarize Text: Request a summary of the text.
   • Translate: Translate text into another language.
   • Code Generation: Generate code based on data from the clipboard.
   • Rewrite Text: Modify text in a different style or structure using natural language.

2. AI-Powered: To enhance these capabilities, the app communicates with OpenAI servers. However, this requires paid access to the OpenAI API.

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(*) Note: You can download the Power Toys suite from the Microsoft Store for Windows 11. The download is free, but the AI features required a paid access to the OpenAI API. 

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Statisticians

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A humorous dig at statisticians:

"A statistician is one who draws a straight line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion"

Quoted from the book "The Wise Men"

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Innovators v Bureaucracy

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Recently heard: this lament from IT innovation workers:

[We] encounter ironclad corporate hierarchies and resistance to change, a paradox in [our] industry that thrives on innovation and risk-taking.

"They" want things in a particular order; they want case studies and past experience. IT doesn't work like that. There is no past experience. We have to reinvent ourselves every day.

As reported by Joseph Coleman

Golly! I think the corporate masters must have missed the Agile memo. 

They may also have missed some principles of risk management in the context of 'new to the world' development, to wit: 

Some things never work out; some things are a home run. Setting artful limits to the balance sheet is the key skill if you aren't willing to bet the business.

On the other hand .....

There's a case to made for a business case, even in the context of Agile methods. 

Unless you are spending your own money, you have an obligation to the financier to show some respect and responsibility for the funds they are providing, even if you keep overrunning and going back for more. In effect, "innovation" never met a budget it couldn't bust!

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Cost: Let's review

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How many ways are there to say "Cost"?

Certainly, more than one!

When "they" ask: 'How do YOU manage cost?", your answer is: 'It's complicated' because there are so many varieties of 'cost'.

Project managers certainly have at least this list:

• Estimated cost (of course, an estimate has to be made in the context of a plan: scope and schedule and resource plans)
• Baseline cost (estimated cost at the beginning of a planned period)
• Re-baseline (Sunk cost, plus a "new" estimate for the ensuing period)
• Cost variance (the difference or departure of actual cost from the baseline)
  
  
• Planned value (baseline cost input to the project, over time, allocated to planned functional or feature achievement)
• Earned value (as a proportion of Planned Value actually completed)
• Cost performance Index (as a 'cost efficiency' measure of how well cost input earns value)
• Estimated Cost to Complete (ETC): the marginal cost to complete the remaining baseline
• Estimated Cost at Completion (EAC): the sum of all the actual costs, usually including both direct costs and those indirect costs allocated to the project.
  
  
• Actual cost (measured at a point in time, regardless of achievement)
• Sunk cost (aka actual cost incurred)
• Direct cost (costs attributed to this project, and this project only)
• Indirect or overhead cost (common costs shared across many projects, proportionally)
  
  
• Labor cost (a component of direct cost; does not include overhead labor)
• Standard cost (used by service organizations and Time & Materials proposals to 'fix' or standardize the "labor cost by category" to a single dollar figure within a range of costs for that labor category. *)
• Material and contracted services cost
  
  
• Throughput cost (only that part of direct cost required to actually construct value outcomes; often used in combination with Standard Cost)
• Construction cost (aka Throughput cost, but sometimes also total of direct costs)
  
  
• Incentive cost (paid as direct payments to individuals and contractors for specific performance achievements)

Finance, accounting, and business management have a few more:

• General and Administrative cost (G&A), mostly for "top-level headquarters" expenses
• Marginal cost (cost of one more item that does not require more of 'something else' to enable)
• Cost margin (difference between cost of sales and revenue associated with those costs)
  
  
• Discounted cost (cost after a reserve for risk, usually calculated over time)
• Depreciated cost (cost accumulated over time, as different from cost in the moment)
• Cost of sales (direct cost to generate sales)
  
  
• Activity Based Costing [ABC] Overhead costs allocated to specific activity, plus direct costs of the activity.

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(*) Standard Cost: As an example, for Labor Category 1, the salaries may range from $1 to $10, but the Standard Cost for this category may be $7 because most in this category have salaries toward the upper end. Standard Cost is not necessarily an arithmetic average within the category; it is a weighted average

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Innovation Power

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Did you know your project might be at the nexus of geopolitical power, military power, and economic power? Wow! That's a big menu for the project office.

Eric Schmidt, formerly a top executive at Google, puts it this way in an essay in "Foreign Affairs", not your usual project read. He calls is INNOVATION POWER.

Innovation power is the ability to invent, adopt, and adapt new technologies. It contributes to both hard and soft power. High-tech weapons systems increase military might, new platforms and the standards that govern them provide economic leverage, and cutting-edge research and technologies enhance global appeal

He goes on: "There is a long tradition of states harnessing innovation to project power abroad, but what has changed is the self-perpetuating nature of scientific advances. Developments in artificial intelligence in particular not only unlock new areas of scientific discovery; they also speed up that very process"

In effect, Schmidt is saying that what's different is that whereas in the past there were plateaus of innovation: Bronze, steel, steam, electricity, telecomm, stored-program stored-data computing. Once you mastered the technology of those plateaus, there was a long period of technological stability.

No more. AI has properties of "positive feedback". Its possibilities just keep on growing. There doesn't seem to be a plateau or stability. And everything is driven by a need to be first .... speed! 

OODA loops
Remember the OODA loops: Observe, orient, decide, act? Well we are just on the cusp of doing that autonomously  self-driving vehicles; autonomous drones; pick-pack-and ship robots; and a myriad of other tasks where speed and accuracy are key.

Quantum Computing
And then comes quantum computing which, when in the positive feedback loop, will drive innovative breakthroughs that are almost unimaginable. 

One wonders if the usual project rails are up to the tasks ahead

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AI F-16 Dogfight

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Now here's an interesting project: Designing the code for a real F-16 fighter aircraft dog fight. 

As reported in "Breaking Defense", DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- "In a ‘world first,’ DARPA project demonstrates AI dogfighting in real jet"

In late 2023 at Edwards AFB in California we learn: "In the span of a couple weeks, a series of trials witnessed a manned F-16 face off against a bespoke Fighting Falcon known as the Variable In-flight Simulator Aircraft, or VISTA. A human pilot sat in the VISTA’s cockpit for safety reasons, but an AI agent did the flying, with results officials described as impressive — though they declined to provide specific detail, like the win/loss ratio of the AI pilot, due to “national security” reasons."

This stuff just keeps on coming, changing the face of warfare in near-real time.

 

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Work 4, Take 3 off

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Could your project handle a 4-day workweek? 

The principle of "get it done, no matter what it takes" would have to step aside I think. 

But during more routine periods, productivity might actually go up with no additional cost.

Obviously, there's lot to debate.

Here's what 'Management 3.0' thinks are the advantages (paraphrased from a recent newsletter)

Improved Well-being

Evidence shows a shorter workweek leads to reduced stress, lowered risk of burnout, and a significant boost in work-life balance.

Environmental Benefits

Less commuting translates directly to a reduction in carbon emissions. 

Enhanced Productivity

When time is compressed, focus intensifies. Studies, including those by 4 Day Week Global, indicate that employees become more efficient, prioritize effectively, and streamline their workflows, often maintaining or even exceeding previous productivity levels.

Economic Advantages

Improved well-being leads to reduced absenteeism and staff turnover

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By the rules, or not?

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A lot of great outcomes are directly from emergent innovation

• Emergent meaning the properties were not predictable from analyzing the constituents; they surprise us all when the integrated constituents all came together and something new appears!
• Innovation meaning that risks to norms were deliberately taken; a form of destruction-construction

But not everybody is comfortable for destruction-construction; and indeed, there are many industries where the rules and regulations prohibit departure from the norms.

And so if you are managing a rules-based rules-driven project, what's the profile of the staff you need?

The question begs the answer: people who have been successful obtaining quality outcomes while still following the rules ... staying between the hedges, as it were.

So, who are 'they' that can get it done within the rules?

Look here first for the "rules" people:

• Former military and police
• Former government agencies staff
• Former very large corporate leaders
• Former staff from major 'safety' projects (where the stakes were life-threatening)
• People who value discipline, even if not one of the 'formers'
• Athletes from team sports, particularly if not the star of the team
• Socially moderate, and so likely to fit well into a heterogeneous team

Now, of course, there are a lot of 'formers' from rules-based organizations that are 'former' because they can't follow the rules. It's likely they have been invited to leave and apply their spirits elsewhere. Your job is to filter these rules-misfits out of your hiring plan.

Rules don't necessarily quash innovation

Rules generally go to methods and limits. Rarely do you find a rule about an outcome.

So, within the allowable methods, and within the allowable limits of disturbance, sustainability, availability, and quality in the large sense, any innovative outcome is possible.

You just need to hire the 'rules people' to get there!

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Risk Management: Chains and funnels

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What to make of chains and funnels? And, if I also stick in anchors, does it help?

What I'm actually talking about is conjunctive events, disjunctive events, and anchor bias:

• Conjunctive events are chains of event for which every link in the chain must be a success or the chain fails. Success of the chain is the product of each link's success metric. In other words, the chain's success probability degrades geometrically (example: chain of 'n' links, each with probability 'p', has an overall probability of p*p*p* .... for 'n' p's.)
    
• Disjunctive events are independent events, all more or less in parallel, somewhat like falling in a funnel, such that if one falls through (i.e, failure) and it's part of a system, then the system may fail as a whole. In other words, if A or B or C goes wrong, then the project goes wrong.
  
  
• 
  

The general tendency to overestimate the probability of conjunctive events leads to unwarranted optimism in the evaluation of the likelihood that a plan will succeed or that a project will be completed on time. Conversely, disjunctive structures are typically encountered in the evaluation of risks. A complex system, such as a nuclear reactor or a human body, will malfunction if any of its essential components fails.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky

"Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases"

Fair enough. Where does the anchor come in?

Anchoring refers to the bias introduced into our thinking or perception by suggesting a starting value (the anchor) but then not adjusting far enough from the anchor for our estimate to be correct. Now in the sales and marketing game, we see this all the time. 

Marketing sets an anchor, looking for a deal in the business case; the sales guy sets an anchor, hoping not to have to give too much away post-project. The sponsor sets an anchor top down on the project balance sheet, hoping the project manager will accept the risk; and the customer sets anchors of expectations.

But in project planning, here's the anchor bias:

• The likely success of a conjunctive chain is always less than the success of any link
• The likely failure of a disjunctive funnel is always greater than the failure of any element.

Conjunctive chains are products of numbers less than 1.0.

• How many of us  would look at a 7 link chain of 90% successes in each link and realize that there's less than one 1 chance in 2 that the chain will be successful? (probability = 0.48)

Disjunctive funnels are more complex.
They are the combinations (union) of independent outcomes net of any conjunctive overlaps (All combinations of OR less all AND). In general the rules of combinations and factorials apply.

• How many of us would look at a funnel of 7 objects, each with likely 90% success (10% failure) and realize that there's better than 1 chance in 3 that there will be 1 failure among 7 objects in the funnel? (probability = 0.37 of exactly 1 failure)*

 The fact is, in the conjunctive case we fail to adjust downward enough from 90%; in the disjunctive case we fail to adjust upward from the 10% case.  Is it any wonder that project estimates go awry?

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*This is a binomial combination of selecting exactly 1 from 7, where there are 6 conjunctive successes and 1 conjunctive failures: factorial (7 take 1) *conjunctive failure * conjunctive success

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Flat organization, or Not?

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The world was flat, but perhaps no more.

Leadership-Risk linkage

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When applying the principle of "calculated risk", leaders should pick subordinates with the intellectual subtlety to evalutate strategic and operational problems in their full context.

They should be given the latitude to judge just how much risk is appropriate given the value of the objective and the balance of resources.

Paraphrased from the writings of historian
Craig L. Symonds

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