The Project Execution Paradox is this: the more you advance in a project, the more you know about it, and at the same time the least degrees of freedom you have to influence it.
It is a close cousin of the sunk cost syndrome, which leads us to continue on absurd projects because of what had been spent already.
There are several techniques to overcome this paradox. They are mostly aimed to minimize commitment and maximize knowledge early in the project. They are routinely used without people realizing their ultimate aim:
- create an explicit gate-based decision path that allows to review the project case during the development of the team’s knowledge and understanding of it, and possibly decide to stop it (or to go back to the drawing boards) before too much gets committed,
- the ‘lean startup’ path that develops the project with small commitments of resources of energy while maximizing learning and the number of possible iterations,
- All planning approaches which aim at dedicated resources to increasing knowledge before large expenditures are being made.
Whatever the approach, the paradox will remain and surprises will occur during project execution. By being aware of the Project Execution Paradox we can try to anticipate better and be prepared for its expression.
