Dynamic Management

The concept of project dynamism was defined in Project Management Approaches for Dynamic Environments . The business environment has been changing at an increasing pace [1, 2], [3]. Peter Diamandis (2013) says technology is creating and destroying billion dollar industries in extraordinary rapid time-frames Rothwell and Zegveld say we are in the midst of a technology explosion [4]. As far back as 1985 they claimed 90% of our technical knowledge was generated in the last 55 years, and that 90% of all the scientists and engineers who ever lived were still alive and working. Their prediction was that: technical knowledge will continue to increase exponentially, doubling every 30 years Perrino and Tipping reported “the pace of technology is accelerating, raising the stakes and risks for managing innovation, and requiring early warning and shorter response time..” [5]. Change, in all forms of technology and business processes, can be regarded as increasingly pervasive and provi...

If you are working in a dynamic environment then some of the dynamic project management techniques in this blog might be useful to you, but how do you know you are working in a dynamic environment? Let's contrast two extremes, … a project in a static environment with one in a dynamic environment… Table 1 - Comparing static with dynamic (Collyer 2013, p142) Static Environments Stability Is the Norm Dynamic Environments Rapid Change Is the Norm The future is mostly predictable Goals are stationary Environment is relatively static – changes yearly or over decades The future is difficult to predict Goals are moving High technology – changes daily or weekly Change brings more harm than good Allowing change is mostly damaging Change brings more good than harm Resisting change is mostly damaging Work is directable like a bullet – like a factory production line Work is guidable like a missile like – cars in traffic guided by drivers, rules and signs Bu...

Lean or agile approaches would seem to be the most obvious contenders for use in dynamic environments. According to the Agile Manifesto (Fowler & Highsmith, 2001), the agile movement aims to discover better ways of developing software. Highsmith (2005) claims “agility is the ability to both create and respond to change in order to profit in a turbulent business environment”, and that agile planning and requirements analysis can take as much time as in a conventional serial phase approach, but the activities are spread across multiple iterations. While the founders of the Agile movement were, like practitioners in other industries, frustrated with traditional approaches, agile is founded in a variety of problems related to software development, and dynamism is a single dimension that may apply in many industries. Dynamism may cause problems in some industries that don't exist in software development, and Agile may solve problems that don't exist in other industries. Beca...

In this post I present the Model for Managing Dynamism in Projects. Strategies that increase speed and flexibility can be used to mitigate rapid change. Speed and flexibility inform the broad and practical approaches listed in the model. The approaches include: emergent iterative planning, guideline controls, flexible leadership with rapid decision-making, timely and efficient communication, and an egalitarian goal-orientated culture. Speed is defined as a higher than normal rate of project execution to deliver project goals before excessive change reduces benefits. Flexibility is defined as the ability to react with minimal penalty in time, cost or performance in response to change in order to maximise benefits in a turbulent business environment. The core components that make up the dynamism problem, change and speed of change, are depicted in Figure 1. Figure 1 - Core Components of the Dynamism Problem (Collyer 2013, p127) In the Model for Managing Dynamism in Projects, increa...

In a dynamic environment the quality of your product diminishes rapidly the longer you delay its delivery. In fact the value of your perfections will be completely outweighed by the lost opportunity from not having your product in use before it becomes irrelevant. Often this will require some tough decisions about scope. The cost of excessive scope is shown as the waste component in Figure 1 . Quality in dynamic environments needs to be interpreted as bare minimum fitness for use in a limited time window of opportunity. Conversely, the cost of insufficient scope or quality at some point outweighs the lost opportunity cost, as depicted in Figure 2. A critical consideration in managing dynamism is balancing the risks of insufficient quality against the cost of lost opportunity as shown in Figure 3, and this can require close attention and pragmatic decisions. The key is understanding the actual material cost of delay and constantly comparing that to the value of the proposed enhanc...

When you are conducting projects in dynamic environments an obvious way to deal with rapid change is to simply resist it. This could be achieved by: freezing the design, and rejecting change requests; Reject adoption of new (unproven) technologies or techniques; and simply extending the life of existing systems. In highly dynamic environments, the benefits of this make static approach are countered by challenges which might include: lost opportunities through delayed implementation of new approaches, materials or business objectives that provide significant benefits, despite the challenges; reduced business competitiveness, especially when competing organisations offer, or make use of, new systems that are often more effective; reduced business compatibility when an organisation falls too far behind best practice, and finds it difficult to recruit staff familiar with their environment. Sometimes technology used on a previous project simply does not exist anymore, and ne...