Project Management through the rear view mirror?

 

 

 

 

 

 

It still surprises me how often I see many organizations, large organizations, still managing their projects through the rear view mirror.  Let's think about this analogy for a minute.

Most of us understand the speed and efficiency we gain when moving from point A to point B while driving a car.  We also understand how much slower things can get if we try to move from point A to point B by driving in reverse as we are looking in the rear view mirror.  Along these same lines, it would be disastrous if we were to move forward from point A to point B by only looking in the rear view mirror and not paying attention to where we are going.

It is this idea of focusing on where we have been rather than where we are going that I have seen too many organizations get caught up in and stalemate in analysis paralysis.  When this happens, the goal of the project is either not achieved or the scope is changed to match what can be accomplished.  By focusing too much on past efforts, we are setting ourselves up to repeat the failures.  We need to learn from our past, but not let it drive our future projects.

Project management is about continually learning and making our processes better.  If we continually drive forward by looking at the past, we will stall because we can no longer "learn" or get better results out of our performance due to our narrow vision of what can be achieved.  Only by trying different things can we truly understand what creating better processes and efficiencies is about.

In the end, we want to keep moving forward and using the past performance and issues as a guide to help steer clear of the potholes on the project management highway.