What do you draw when you are visualizing a project on a whiteboard?

I draw an arrow from left to right that represents a timeline. Not always. But many times.

The way you visualize, determines your focus.

I’ve been playing with the simple but powerful concept of a Project Story Circle.

The project is represented by a circular arrow and is divided in half with a horizontal line.

The idea behind it is the following:

• An organization has the need for something. A challenge has to be conquered. A group of people starts a journey and brings back their result to the organization.
• The upper half of the circle represents time spent outside the project. Preparing for the voyage. And getting the results back to the place where it is needed.
• The bottom half makes up for project time.
• This will focus attention on the transitions organization-project and project-organization.
• This will focus attention on the idea that you undertake the project long before the actual project starts and that it only ends when you have gone full circle; when the actual benefits are realized.

You can use this shape when discussing projects.

• Where do people join the journey? (indicate on the circle)
• In which parts are they active? (indicate on the circle)
• Where do they expect problems? (indicate on the circle)

This basic shape is inspired by The Hero’s Journey, the universal structure of myths. What makes this narrative structure so interesting is not that many movies are based upon it. It’s more the reason why so many stories are following this flow. There is a certain appeal to it, we all recognize parts of how we experience our own life story.

One essential part of the Hero’s Journey is the transformation the hero is going through. In the storyline there is a defining moment when the hero is experiencing a major set back where he is hitting a brick wall. And this wall will be the turning point. During the bottom half of the circle you can also bring in the concept of the red convertible:

“I think a project can have a “red convertible” moment. It’s that breakdown, or more that revelation, in which you remember why you were doing something in the first place. … This transition is the “red convertible”.”

Talking about transitions is important. Transitions reveal patterns. And antipatterns. It’s the moment when contrast is at its peak. When everything remains the same, we don’t notice our rhythms and boundaries that much. When all of a sudden everything is changing, we start to notice what felt natural before.

I think the Project Story Circle can assist you in discussing those transitions.

The Project Story Circle. Talking About Transitions. is a post from: Project Shrink.

The best blogs are like Desperate Housewives, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. You can enjoy an individual episode, but true bliss only happens by watching every single episode from every single season from these fabulous television series.

My two favorite blogs are Fluent Self by Havi Brooks and Penelope Trunk by, well, herself. Every blog post is great on its own. But you miss more than half if you only read a single post. You miss the steps that Havi and Penelope had to go through to get to their insights.

… I wrote earlier this year.

How the authors cope with gaps and how they resolve these gaps in their thinking, that is what I find fascinating.

That’s why this blog is more like journal than a book. It is by no means a finished product. Oh I wished

If you want to enjoy the diversity in communication, if you want to enjoy the fact that not everybody likes to receive the information the same way, you don’t need a list of tricks. You need a passion to explore. Well. You don’t “need” anything. But you know what I mean.

In the tradition of the Agile manifesto, we would write something like:

“Exploration over lists”.

So. Yes. Wow. The Project Shrink has a deeper level. Wow. Who would have known?

Actually. It is more like a “higher” level. “Meta” even.

Trying out different mechanisms to talk about stuff is perhaps the most important element I really hope you take away from all these ramblings.

Like this for example. A doodle about how a project culture is “created”. Without actually being “created”. It is more like “revealed”. And the tools to do it are language (the labels we choose, the stories we tell, the associations we have) and visualization.

This combines my webinar on project culture, the discussions about essential conversations and templated conversations, the balance between homogeneity and diversity in teams, and the concepts of boundaries, containers and rhythms.

You can be the judge if it adds something to the mix. If it provides you with additional understanding.

For me personally, doodling changed my approach to almost every thing that feels complex and appears difficult. For more information, visit The Doodle Revolution by Sunni Brown.

Culture. Language. Visualization. And Why You Should Like Blogs. is a post from: Project Shrink.

Many months later, the list of exercises that use the adventure travel metaphor has grown. It is time for an overview.

You can click here to download a PDF version.

You will find detailed information in the individual exercises, like Landmarks (previously called Yellow Brick Road), Stakeholders, Decisions (Signpost maps) and Uncertainty (Hurricane maps).

About the metaphor.

Think about your project as a Big Adventure. You are trying to find a treasure. You are going to retrieve a stolen secret document. You are going to set the princess free. Or you are going to create something exciting for an awesome client.

You and your team will work hard to reach The Goal. To create The Thing.

Every project is a journey. It is never a straight line. You might have some idea about how to move through the unknown territory in search for The Goal. The X on the map.

But it’s surely isn’t a done deal. Things happen. Things aren’t always what you think they are. New shit will come to light, as The Dude would say.

The Big Adventure Overview Map. is a post from: Project Shrink.

And this:

It changed my work. Really.

Before I just had a stack of Moleskine notebooks (what else) full of seemingly unrelated notes. Words. Lots of words.

I knew there was a pattern. Somewhere.

But connecting the dots got just more difficult. Making more notes made things worse. Not better.

So. I started doodling. Making awful simplistic drawings. And I am sharing these drawings. Not to show off my skills. It is more to show you it’s ok if you can only doodle and not create picture perfect images.

This is what I found.

If you make a lot of drawings, a common visual language emerges. You use several symbols over and over again. The use of identical symbols reveal a hidden link.

After the individual images I crafted a “story”. On the topic I find most difficult. Identity. Ok. I also used text and quotes.

I created many pages to explain to myself the things I had written over the last years.

This helped me immensely in explaining this stuff. To you and to myself. Mainly that last part.

It changed my approach to almost every thing that feels complex and appears difficult.

As always. You don’t have to try this. Really.

But before you decide, I hope you have a look at this short (5mins) TED talk by Sunni Brown, author of “Gamestorming”. Doodlers, unite!

Connecting The Dots With Doodling. Making Complex Things Less Complex. is a post from: Project Shrink.

What was I thinking?

It helps me to remind what I think is a true “agile” PM. I decided on this four years ago:

“To be able to create assumptions and being able to reason to what happens based upon those assumptions, you need theories, you need models. They provide us with a simplified version of reality which make it possible for us mortals to have a clue about what happens if we press button A or button B, take the blue or the red pill, scream loud or shut up. So, … we need theories and models about project reality. And we need a lot of them. Project life can throw a zillion possible situations at us, and as models are by definitions simplifications, we need as much mental images as we possibly can come up with. If you have multiple models, chances that you have one that suites the situation are increasing dramatically.

If you are talking about “agile project managers”, this would be the key aspect of my definition. A project manager that has a lot of mental models about projects available, and can adopt his mindset according the situation without problems, is what I call a true “agile” PM. As with any social situation, a group of interacting stakeholders is a very complex system. You are never going to come up with one this-size-fits-all model that is usable. The only shot PMs have is being fluent in more than one mental model.”

Cool.

Today I would call it “resilient PM”. The “agile” label is taken. And I stopped trying to get attention by going for the shock effect. You only get negative attention. Yuk.

Today I cover this topic in the Open Mind vs Close Mind balance to create resilience.

But still. I almost forgot.

Sometimes it is hard to remember why I focus on theory and models.

I went through the archives because of this “drawing”.

It reflects the idea that there are several ways to switch your mindset.

• Using metaphors and language to rephrase a situation, using play and storytelling to challenge your context;
• Using visualization to trigger the recognition of patterns (the above image is an example);
• Surround yourself with diverse people that have different opinions and backgrounds;
• And finally, know yourself (it only takes three steps. Really.)

I covered all these topics already. But I cannot remember. At least, not without the blog.

I hope you explore the links provided. I do.

This blog is not constructed to display the awesomeness that is me. Well, perhaps a little. Ok. Well. Some.

Ok. It’s the public declaration of my context.

But it is also my own journal for helping me to sort out concepts. To assist me in making up my own mind.

I hope that my journey is helpful to you too.

That is how blogs work.

The Resilient PM. Because The Agile Label Is Taken. is a post from: Project Shrink.

My two favorite blogs are Fluent Self by Havi Brooks and Penelope Trunk by, well, herself. Every blog post is great on its own. But you miss more than half if you only read a single post. You miss the steps that Havi and Penelope had to go through to get to their insights.

It helps to be familiar with the unusual level of metaphorical expressions at the Fluent Self blog to understand that a post about moving to Bolivia is actually referring to not having children.

And with Penelope Trunk … well … uhm … you have to understand large chunks of her background to appreciate her advice.

For me it is not actually the individual insights that are important. Well. They are. But not that important.

Yes.

It’s the explanation on how they get these insights that makes me an eager subscriber to the blogs.

I wrote as a note: “It’s the journey that is more important than the destination.”

But I cannot say that out loud without throwing up. So. I quote myself to make it less cheesy.

That’s my problem with books.

It is a final product. All polished up. Shiny.

A book provides a coherent view, a description without hesitation. Without gaps in the argumentation.

But reality has gaps and is not coherent. Authors do have hesitations. And doubts.

How they cope with doubts and how they resolve gaps, now, that is far more interesting.

I think.

But that is probably because I have a blog. And doubts and hesitations. Lots of that.

Oh. And gaps. Way too many gaps. And holes.

I realize that I hardly share my process on how to combine sociology, psychology, management, leadership, project management, communication and everything else that comes to my mind.

I found one post that tried to explain how I make complex stuff less complex.

“The path I am on is spiral. It looks like I am running around in circles. Heck. It sometimes feels like I am in this loop. Lead actor in my own Groundhog Day. I write about topics and revisit them again and again over a longer time frame, refining them, adding to them, and mixing topics I didn’t know were related.”

Hmmm.

I actually do use techniques.

Visualization for example.

I have a notebook in which I make drawings of concepts.

Hideous drawings. But that is beside the point.

(What is his freak flag? Reading cues.)

You have to simplify when you draw.

(Using expressions of identity as attractor for your people.)

If you make a lot of drawings, a common visual language emerges. You use several symbols over and over again. The use of identical symbols reveal a hidden link.

(How groups collapse and renew. This was the basis for The Adaptive Cycle In Social Systems.)

(Balance between homogeneity and diversity.)

How To Make Complex Stuff Less Complex? is a post from: Project Shrink.

You can visit ProjectCartoon.com to view this cartoon and create your own versions.

If your project is suffering from something similar, you can use this cartoon as an exercise to raise awareness and discuss the different expectations in a non-threatening way.

After explaining and laughing about this famous cartoon, create a list of the project stakeholders and ask the people in the room to pick one or two stakeholders and draw their interpretation of the project end result. Every participant should also draw his own version. “What does ‘done’ look like to you?”

Tape all the resulting drawings to a wall, and let the discussion begin.

What Does Your Swing Look Like? Aligning Expectations By Drawing. is a post from: Project Shrink.

I already stopped watching television (except for Knight Rider). I only listen to non-stop music radio stations.

Sometimes it feels like being hosed down by information.

In the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?” Andrew B Newberg, MD states:

“Our brain receives 400 billion bits/second of information, but we’re only aware of 2000 bits/second.”

Great. I seem to be able to use broadband, but currently I am running a 14Kb dial in modem.

I need to neglect information. I have to reduce the input.

Fish have a great mechanism for this, it’s called “front priority“:

“If the fish act upon any piece of information that hits their body the movement of the school gets slow and slight chaotic. By focusing mainly on the fish in front of them, you get this tightly packed movement. The fish seem to swim upstream the information flow.”

If we ignore pieces of information we are better off than having all the information? Can this be true?

Apparently so.

In his book “Blink” Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term “thin-slicing“:

“… our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones.”

This “thin slice of reality” is a pattern of all things happening in your surroundings. You take the slice and compare it with patterns stored in your mind. When you find a matching pattern, you have made up your mind about a particular situation. This is an unconscious process.

These patterns are dynamic systems in action, a human system seen over a time period. Patterns are trends over time and involve dependencies with other systems.

To spot such trends in projects we use metrics as indicators. If I have the right metrics I can ignore everything around me and focus just on the dashboard.

Can this be true?

We use metrics as indicators, but we need to visualize the data in such a way that trends and dependencies get visible.

The Gantt chart is a bad example. A very bad example.

Tufte presents a design for a Project Management interface that addresses some of the problems with rendering large Gantt Charts. He advocates splitting the chart into two views. At the top of the chart, you see the project timeline laid out in phases, with the current phase denoted with a unique color. On the bottom half of the chart, the local view basically zooms in on the current phase to display more detail.

I am still tired.

But it seems the best thing is to focus on a few things, reduce the input. It will increase my performance. But only if the input is presented in a proper way, in a way that visualizes trends and dependencies.

Can this really be true?

Filtering Information: Why You Cannot See Everything is a post from: Project Shrink.

It takes 5 seconds to load and it will allow you to click dynamically through the top of the government of the United States. On top of the screen are a couple of small buttons: [Org] will give you the names of the organizations, and [Per] will let you see each living person! (and yes, Barack is in the middle).

The technology used is called OrgScope and it makes complex data (like a networked organization) more accessible.

Organizational Map of New US Government is a post from: Project Shrink.

Reality doesn’t fit into our head. It is too complex for us to comprehend. Our mechanism to cope with this problem: we think “Gaussian”, we stereotype. It is the human need to categorize everything. We just have to put the world around us in neat boxes. And if we put things in the wrong box, the whole mechanism breaks down.

Recommended post: Black Swan: The Link Between Mind, Complexity And Resilience

We don’t thoroughly analyze a situation. We see “thin-slices” of reality. We draw conclusions from a narrow period of an experience. We sense “a pattern” we recognize in human interaction.

Recommended post: Thin-slicing Project Managers

Patterns are dynamic systems in action, a human system seen over a time period. Patterns are trends (time) and involve dependencies with other systems.

Recommended post: Projects As A Complex Adaptive System: Why Bother?

To spot such trends in projects we use metrics as indicators. We need to learn to use them properly to assist in detecting potential problems. System View is a technique that is useful in this area. By looking at changes in variables (the metrics) one can refine the problem situation by using the several archetypes System View provides. By doing this, you are passing the superficial symptoms, and going straight for the problems heart.

Recommended article (PDF): Project Profiling With Systems Thinking

We use metrics as indicators. We need to visualize the data in such a way that trends and dependencies get visible. The Gantt chart e.g. is a bad example. Tufte presents a design for a project management interface that addresses some of the problems with rendering large Gantt Charts. He advocates splitting the chart into two views. At the top of the chart, you see the project timeline laid out in phases, with the current phase denoted with a unique color. On the bottom half of the chart, the local view basically zooms in on the current phase to display more detail.

Recommended posting: The Death Of Gantt Charts?

Mind, Complex Systems And Information Visualization is a post from: Project Shrink.