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Why Good Projects Fail Anyway, Nadim F. Mattat and Ronald N. Ashkenas, Harvard Business Review, September 2003, p 109-114, (reprint R0309H) piqued my curiosity. I've been skeptical about mainstream publication's thought pieces on project management. I was pleasantly surprised to find a thoughtful article.

I'll start by sharing the last paragraph with you: (I just love to start at the ending)

Attempting to achieve complex goals in fast-moving and unpredictable environments is humbling. Few leaders and few organizations have figured out how to do it consistently. We believe that a starting point for greater success is shedding the blueprint model that has implicitly driven executive behavior in the management of major efforts. Managers expect they will be able to identify, plan for, and influence all the variables and players in advance, but they can't. Nobody is that smart or has that clear a crystal ball. They can, however, create an ongoing process of learning and discovery, challenging the people close to the action to produce results — and unleashing the organizations's collective knowledge and creativity in pursuit of discovery and achievement.

The authors have one big recommendation they offer. They implore project managers to organize the project as a set of rapid-results initiatives. They make a number of claims for doing a series of quick focussed projects within projects. An obvious benefit is getting a payback from the investment fast. A second benefit is learning quickly to influence the balance of the project.

I'm reminded of the work of Christopher Alexander. Alexander is an architect. Not just any architect, but the person who created a language for design — A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building. Alexander talks about repair as the usual course of action following the move-in to any space. He encourages architects to get the client to live in the space as quickly as possible so the architect can begin the process of repair (continuing design) before the project is complete. Alexander is sure we cannot anticipate how people will use the space provided until they use it.

We live in an illusion that we can figure it all out (ahead of time). It is blatantly false. The future is uncertain and unknowable. We can get off to a good start on our projects. But we have to engage with the people who are 'living in our spaces' and with those people 'building our spaces' to tap into their wisdom, care for the product of our efforts, and their collective talents.

Matta and Ashkenas have described again why a reductionist and deterministic approach to project delivery is bound to fail us. Let's get on with the reform.