Mort now understood why Ginny had wanted to meet off-site. "I'm worried," she was saying, "Dave always seems to be overloaded. Even back in March, when things were going smoothly on both our projects. So I thought I'd check with you."

"Hmm. I've been getting the same story," Mort replied. "He keeps saying that work on other projects is making him miss his dates."

Mort and Ginny then talked with Sid, the lead on Dave's third project team. Sid told them that he'd heard the same thing from Dave, too. Once all three of them — Mort, Ginny, and Sid — pooled their information, they knew they needed help from HR. That way they could possibly save all three projects, and the career of a bright but troubled employee.

By working together, and being open with each other, Mort, Ginny, and Sid combined what they knew. The information each one had wasn't enough in itself to tell any one of them what to do, but combined, they were able to choose an effective management intervention. By fusing together all they knew, they could see the real problem through the fog.

To see through the fog that hides the rocks, you sometimes need information from outside your project. Here are a few tips for seeing through the fog.

Share what you know with other project managers

Compare issues lists from several projects, looking for patterns and commonalities. Compare schedules to look ahead for contention for people or resources. Talk to other customers of suppliers or subcontractors, both within your organization and outside it if you can.

Learn from history

If you suspect a problem might be looming, interview past project managers who've worked with the people or subcontractor that might be at issue.

Use cluster analysis

Search defect reports and schedule slips to find clusters of problems. When you find a cluster around a single component, consider restarting that component from scratch, possibly with a different team. Look carefully at other components that were built the same way, possibly on other projects.

Be uniformly skeptical

Components that were built by people who are well regarded sometimes escape early rigorous testing because of favorable bias. Examine all test plans for bias and make sure that all components are treated equally skeptically.

Projects are usually in one of four states: not yet begun, finished, in crisis, and about to be in crisis. The only transition that happens unexpectedly is from about-to-be-in-crisis to crisis. By learning to see through the fog, you can make that transition a little more gracefully, and a lot less often.  Top    Next Issue

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The Storming stage of Tuckman's development sequence for small groups is when the group explores its frustrations and degrees of disagreement about both structure and task. Only by understanding these misalignments is reaching alignment possible. Here is a framework for this exploration. Available here and by RSS on January 29.

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