The Great Escape from the Prison of Project Plans
summary
Mark Smolley examines why traditional project plans and milestone reporting create an illusion of control in unpredictable IT work and argues they trap teams in unhelpful processes. He uses the Cynefin framework (applied in DevOps communities) to show how to classify work as ordered, complex, or chaotic and gives guidance on effective actions and processes appropriate to each domain so teams can stop following rigid project constructs and focus on real delivery.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction
- 7:21Project predictability
- 13:21Systems thinking
- 25:16Complex vs complicated
- 26:07Demand-supply-consumption model
- 31:03Value chain weak links
- 33:30Management in complexity
- 39:03Control vs autonomy
- 41:16IT ethics
- 44:14Book on system complexity
- 46:23Unpredictability in management
- 47:06Q&A
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