PMcrunch

Thomas Edison was the quintessential mistake maker.  He believed that the more mistakes he made, the more wrong answers and wrong solutions he could eliminate and, therefore, the closer he came to the correct solution to his problems.  In management and on projects, on one hand, we seek to minimize mistakes but it is important to recognize when “mistakes” can actually be beneficial and produce positive outcomes.  Indeed, we should not be afraid to make mistakes but rather should try to control and leverage the process.  The project portfolio management process is an ideal place to formally do this.

Building mistakes into our Project Plans
Often we fall victim to tightly planning a project, and not allowing for the prospect of mistakes.  This mentality I think is just plan wrong and I have been guilty of it myself.  It does not acknowledge risk and it is very important to build risk into our planning.  There is a relationship to risks, and what I am referring to as mistake making.

Mistake Making Versus Risks
When we estimate, we do build in allowances for risks and uncertainty.  However, the ideal of mistakes versus risks is a bit different.  When we are estimating and we are planning our projects, we are using many assumptions based on lessons learned, past project experiences, standard practices, and so forth.  However, all of these things have their limitations.  For example, on projects, if we think very carefully about our assumptions, maybe even hold a major brainstorming session of the team about our assumptions, these assumptions may reveal some areas where not only are we taking on some level of risks, but we also have a opportunity to learn something.  Could be that we don’t know how long a tasks might take, and therefore we want to run an experiment or even make a deliberate mistake in order to learn just how long that task might take.  It might be that we want to test some of our assumptions about the market viability of a product, or about the behavior of a particular chemical compound in an R&D environment.  These provide opportunities to not only execute on the project, but to build a set of much stronger assumptions for the current project, and for future projects.

Project Portfolio Management provides a tremendous opportunity to apply the ideal of deliberate mistake making in the process.  For example, within our project portfolio we may want to include a few projects that are there for the sole purpose of testing our assumptions, and testing our current knowledge.  These projects could end up being very true mistakes, and yield no return.  On the other hand, they could yield a very large return.  The key in a decision making process about such projects, is to identify the potential costs of the mistake and the potential benefit.   Then simply go for the projects that costs a relatively low amount, but can have a potentially, although certainly not certain, high impact.

Mistake Making Requires Playfulness
This mistake-making topic requires a degree of playfulness, so within our organizations and on our project teams it is helpful to build a place within our project cultures for a degree of playfulness.  We need to encourage people to think outside the box.  This can be a great source of deliberate mistake making tasks, tactics, and projects, which could yield great results.  We need to build into our budgets and our plans some time resources, when appropriate, for this type of deliberate business frolicking.  
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John Reiling, PMP
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