General Uncertainty

The uncertainty performance addresses activities and functions associated with risk and uncertainty. We are discussing the general uncertainty.  All lessons are based on the PMBOK®, 6th and 7th Edition.  

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Transcript

This is Kaye B and welcome to another episode of PMP in a Snap. 

We are going to continue to talk about uncertainty on projects because as you know, you can never predict precisely what can happen on a project. With that, there are threats and opportunities within projects.

Potential outcomes that benefit the project objectives are known as opportunities. Potential outcomes that have a negative effect on project objectives are called threats. All together, the set of opportunities and threats comprise the set of project risks. There are several options you can use to respond to uncertainty: 

●     There are times you can reduce the amount of uncertainty by finding out more information such as conducting research or talking to experts. 

●     There are also situations where there is a finite amount of outcomes so your team can prepare for each one of those outcomes. In order to do this, you should have a primary solution available as well as having a backup or contingency plan in case the first solution doesn’t work out 

●     You can also create multiple designs or alternatives early in the project to reduce uncertainty. This allows the project team to look at trade-offs, such as time versus, cost versus quality versus schedule, etc. The intention of this option is not only to explore options but also to learn from working with various alternatives. The alternatives that didn’t work could be used to make better-informed decisions for the next project. 

●     Or, you can build in resiliency. This is the ability to adapt and respond quickly to unexpected changes. This applies to both the project team members and organizational processes. 

There is also ambiguity, and there are two categories: conceptual and situational. Conceptual ambiguity is the lack of effective understanding. This happens a lot when people use similar terms in different ways. Let’s give an example, someone may say, “This task is open.” What does open mean? Does it mean that someone reviewed it? Is someone working on it? Is it just open on your desktop and said screw it? Because there is not a clear definition within the team or organization of what “open” means. This type of ambiguity can be reduced by formally establishing common rules and definitions of terms. 

Situation ambiguity happens when more than one outcome is possible, like the project could be trash and expensive. A way to combat this is having multiple options to solve a problem and this can be done in one of three ways:

You can use the progressive elaboration, which is the iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a project management plan. 

You can do a series of experiments to help identify cause-and-effect relationships or at least reduce the amount of ambiguity. Or create prototypes to help distinguish the relationships between different variables. 

That is your PMP in a Snap. We’ll see you again next week.