As seasoned project managers, we are very familiar with identifying and managing risks (though too often, the activity stops with identifying and we “wing it” from there).  I’ve written here on CERM Insights and elsewhere about assigning a weighted grade to risks based on the likelihood of the risk becoming an issue and the impact to your project should that happen.  From there you manage the higher graded risks more closely as they embody the possibility of causing the most damage to your project and hindering the success.

But what about project assumptions?  We may call them out as part of our charters, but do we actually give them enough attention not only at the beginning but all the way through the project?  Are we blindly allowing assumptions to run free without challenging them, adding high-level risks that may alter the entire course of our project?  I’m of the opinion that, given the broad nature of most assumptions, we need to do a far better job of not only questioning them up front, but managing them much the same way we do risks.  Just like a risk that bridges over to become an issue can require us to enact a response plan, assumptions that ultimately prove invalid need attention and a similar plan to ensure projects proceed on target toward success.

Everyday Assumptions
I make assumptions every day, all day.  When I head to the office, I assume I can travel my normal Interstate route in a certain band of time.  I have to adjust those assumptions if there is rain and certainly if I encounter a wreck that backs things up more than usual.  But even that basic assumption changes weight if I’m headed to the airport to catch a flight vs. going to work.  It’s the same general vicinity, but Southwest won’t hold the plane because I got stuck in traffic.

This is where I see clear parallels between managing risks and managing assumptions.  It’s also where I see the disconnect between my daily assumption management and how we merely seem to accept them on our projects.  Instead of active management like we do in our personal lives, we drift along just accepting all the assumptions without ever challenging them.  They end up as unregistered risks and, when they prove invalid, they become issues we have to deal with and we do so without a plan.  We may be the best risk managers on Earth, but we end up getting stung by assumptions that were completely bad.

Document, Grade, Manage, Challenge
The cure is relatively simple.  We need to work early on to prove out as many of the key assumptions as possible so they are no longer assumptions but facts.  To accomplish this, we have to document them and grade them the same way we do risks.  Then you move to active management and you keep doing that until the assumptions (especially those that scored the higher grades) are proven to be facts or invalid.  As part of that, you need to challenge those assumptions in an appropriate manner so they don’t just languish in your assumptions register, untested and unproven, until they present you with real project issues.

The bottom line is that unverified assumptions can be worse than unmanaged project risks.  They can kill your project and, if you aren’t careful, your career.  But this isn’t an original thought at all.  In fact, as my colleague Howard Wiener (who will write a follow-up piece on this topic) noted, that great American humorist Mark Twain once wrote:

“It ain’t what you don’t know that will kill you.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Bio:
Mark Moore has held multiple professional positions in IT and business for nearly 
three decades serving organizations both small and large, public and private.  With over half that time as a project manager, he has successfully managed major initiatives
spanning multiple years with a cost of over $3 Million and teams of over 250 people.  He has been a Project Management Professional since 2002, served as President of the PMI Western Michigan Chapter, and presented at multiple NCPMI Annual Events.  Mark holds a Masters of Education degree from Colorado State University with a concentration in Adult Education and Training.  He is an experienced writer, speaker and presenter on project management and team building topics.  Mark is the Principal Consultant for Broken Arrow Associates, LTD.  He and his family live in a rural area outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.  To contact Mark for opportunities or questions, send an e-mail to info@baa-ltd.com.