I was invited to participate in writing the 77 Sins of Project Management. I had fun looking over the juicy list of sins. It was hard but I choose Blaming, Rigidity and Satisficing. Why? I had some great project examples and suggestions for project improvement. My thoughts:
Blaming is an assertive, aggressive and often acrimonious assignment of blame for project failure.
During project execution blaming is a reflexive, speed of light response. It is part of our human nature. We are rational. We want answers. The sound byte nature of guilt assignment is beguiling. Quick and witty assessments resonate with us. The issue is decided; maybe only in our mind. So we blame, dump on others and move on to the other 50 action items that we need to accomplish . . . before noon. But is blame that simple. No.
Rigidity is being stiff or unyielding; not pliant or flexible; hard.
In projects it is indifferently or defiantly clinging to policies, practices and behaviors not tailored to the unique project characteristics.
Satisficing is a decision-making strategy which attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution.
Project managers may make an intellectual or emotional choice to not fully examine all stakeholders, requirements or needs. The project then fall shorts on full business requirements or solution identification due to time or team pressures when operating in an uncertain environment.
Do these behaviors occur on your projects? If so, check out solutions to these three project management sins at 77 Sins.
Reprinted [adapted] with permission from The 77 Deadly Sins of Project Management, © 2009 by Management Concepts, Inc. All rights reserved. www.managementconcepts.com
How interesting that blaming, rigidity and satisficing are all a result of human behavior, not inherent in the technical or process challenges of project management. I wonder how many of the 77 Deadly Sins are related to the human nature of project leaders? Please tell us! I am guessing all 77.