The Organic Project

Due to my rampant optimism, I often have three or four half-digested books by my bed. The part of me that knows I have what I need gets guilt-tripped by the part of me that believes I should finish them up. If you have been in this place, you are probably thanking your mother right now for all those times she made you clean your plate.

This stick-to-it endurance is considered valuable in the workplace, in family and relationships. If you have it; you are regarded as someone who can get the job done.

In a work environment, the challenge with this determination is that most new projects plans are conceived with limited perspective and information. These types of projects typically start strong and then the value begins to leak out of them before implementation making the outcome less than inspiring. Alternatively, I have heard project managers bemoan projects that start out small and then morph into something unpredicted. Why does this happen?

I believe that effective projects have a natural tendency to evolve as they mature and that change in scope or project creep should be an anticipated outcome of something that is taking on a life of its own.

Just think about it: Rather than grappling to control the liveliness of the project in order for it to match the original plan, what if teams could revisit the project objectives as a powerful positive? Imagine the difference sitting your team down at a natural interval to say, “This project is developing proper lift and momentum, now it’s time to rebalance the outcomes with time and budget variables. More often the project manager is called to explain why the project “has gone off the rails and how will he/she get it back in control.”

If an evolving project is meeting the objectives, adding value and people are well deployed; we might be better to congratulate ourselves for investing in the project that was the greatest benefit to the organization at the time.

The natural question is how to budget for this growth tendency? A group I worked with recently has altered their quoting process to deliver proposals with budget ranges. It is much better protection for them from the client’s enthusiastic add-ons, the client is happier that their inspired ideas are received within the range and the company does not suffer from quoting too low based on prior information.