Lighthouse Project Management

Blind spots are the cause of every project train wreck.

The project was careening towards a cliff. The technical debt was accumulating, the money was running out and the client was making larger and more distracting changes. At the same time the research and background was inscrutable. The specifications were detailed and vouched for. Expectations were set and reenforced with everyone agreeing enthusiastically with the project vision. Apparently none of that mattered.

I doubled down, vowing to figure out what was really going on no matter what. Eventually I uncovered a force more insidious than the common threats so often championed as the big bad wolves of project management: I was up against psychological bias.

By definition those under the influence of a psychological bias have no idea it’s even there. Unlike more the obvious threats it’s unlikely that anyone will bring it to anyone else’s attention. Even though the project had everything going for it, ultimately it was being undermined by a threat in a blind spot. Worse still, because team member’s can’t see them my related questions seemed like a distraction.

Here’s what I was noticing: Stakeholders would pledge allegiance to the project’s described outcome but their actual behavior would sometimes threaten the project’s…