Augustine's Law: Good Ideas Poorly Executed Are Useless
From the Management Concepts Project and Program Management Perspectives Blog
My name is John Kinser and I am a Sr. Consultant/Instructor with Management Concepts. I will be replacing Jerry Perone as the author of the blog for the Project and Program Management division. I have been a practicing project manager in a variety of fields for over 35 years. If practice only made perfect…One of the questions I hear most often in classes is, “what do you think is the most important thing in project management?” This is akin to asking someone what their favorite book or movie is and expecting an immediate response. Very few people can narrow any rich experience down to a single choice, but if we give them a broader target they can usually list several items. In that spirit, over the next few weeks I will present the Top 10 Laws of Project Management. Each law’s author, origin, and corollaries will be explained and the fundamental concept examined for application in improving project performance.
In an attempt to avoid anonymous, purely humorous sayings common in the field, certain guidelines have been followed for each law:
- Real person said or wrote
- Quote has a documented source
- Has application to project management
- Might not have been originally stated as a “law”
1. Augustine’s Law: A bad idea executed to perfection is still a bad idea.
Norman R. Augustine is a former Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin and a writer of wry observations on business and life including a large number of “laws.” One corollary is: A good idea poorly executed is of no use to anyone.
Validating the Project’s Strategic Alignment
No single decision in project management has more importance than choosing which projects to perform. When choosing the projects that go into the portfolio, any idea of strategy or prioritization is often lost. Projects are initiated at many levels without any overarching strategic planning and then schedules and budgets are arbitrarily trimmed to fit the emergent needs of the organization. The most underappreciated concept in all of initiating is that of opportunity cost. For every project we select to do we are giving up the opportunity to do an essentially infinite number of other projects. All projects need to be carefully examined to be sure that they align with the organization’s strategy and deliver the most value when compared to other potential endeavors.
Using Control Gates in the Planning Process
Running a complex process all the way to the end before performing any quality assuranceincreases the likelihood of losing all the value created. Yet, many projects proceed all the way to getting approval of the project management plan without any kind of control gates. A control gate is a point where significant product or project management deliverables (e.g., preliminary or final product design, work breakdown structure, risk management plan) are examined to verify completeness and quality prior to performing more work. The ideal time to validate return on investment is early on since relatively little money is spent in most projects during planning relative to execution. As da Vinci said “It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
Questions to Consider/Fodder for Comments
Have you seen projects during your career that clearly seemed to be bad ideas?
Were any of these projects terminated?
Is a terminated project a failed project?
Be sure to check out the follow-up post where John goes into greater detail on Augustine's Law.
Tags: 10 Laws of project management, project management
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Eric Melton on -
Good post. I especially like the term/process "validate ROI".
- Is a terminated project a failed project?
In my opinion (and experience), not if it was terminated because it was determined it was not necessary/not worth finishing. -
-
Permalink Reply by John Kinser on -
I agree completely, sunk cost is just that, it can never be recovered, only increased. Killing a project could be the best money you never spent.
One sign of PM maturity is the organization's willingness to pull the plug on underperforming or poorly chosen projects. We'll see more on that when we look at Fitzgerald's Law in a few weeks.
Thanks for taking the time to comment Eric, you can also leave/copy comments to the MC Blog site. -
-
Permalink Reply by Andrew Krzmarzick on -
Thanks for commenting here on GovLoop, John! You're a ground-breaking pioneer for MC ;-)
-
-
Permalink Reply by Teresa Alley on -
About the corollary "A good idea poorly executed is of no use to anyone." What I have seen is that a bad idea executed to perfection, eventually and thankfully dies from lack of maintenance nourishment. However a good idea poorly executed becomes a toxic idea forever. And that hobbles organizations as much as ordinary inertia does.
Q1 - hasn't everyone seen bad ideas brought to completion, usually over budget and past schedule (they were bad ideas after all), but the leadership had such a personal stake that there was only one path - forward. Then the maintenance death occurs because staff is supposed to use/update/apply/support whatever it is once it "goes live." Staff are always insidiously subversive to stuff they don't like in the operations environment.
Q2 - I've not seen bad ideas terminated so much as technology-challenged ideas terminated. The project overreached the possible. Since I'm in the R&D world, overreaching is one way to explore and advance a technology so I wouldn't consider it "bad." Every recently terminated IT project in government comes to mind.
Q3 - Agree with other posters. A terminated project is not necessarily a failed project. And a failed project is not necessarily a "bad idea." -
-
Permalink Reply by John Kinser on
-
I laughed out loud when I read Alley's Corollary to Augustine's Law: "A good idea poorly executed becomes a toxic idea forever." Brilliant observation!
Although I agree that many of these will die a "maintenance death" - great phrase - some pet projects will be championed by executives with enough juice that they never die, just continue to be a black hole of effort. More and more money and time are poured into endless revs, upgrades, and releases even when the ops and support staff try to let it expire from neglect.
Having a project's reach exceed its grasp is, as you note, not automatically a bad thing as long as it is terminated. However, if too much of this goes on I would argue that even in an R&D setting the requirements definition and management process may be deficient, since it should not often yield something that can't be created. The obvious exception is the purely experimental project that is run to prove/disprove a hypothesis. -
-
Permalink Reply by Teresa Alley on
-
Agree with your last paragraph with the exception of at least one shining example - the Osprey. Gnaw on a project long enough and eventually technology (via billions of dollars) rises to meet the challenge....which gets back to your point in paragraph two. Who knows? When the Osprey was fielded it was considered a "bad idea." It is not a sexy airplane like the F-22 but the advanced technologies that make it flyable, if exported to other projects, could eventually make it a "good idea." Which brings another demension to this thread's scope.....does the passage of time make some bad ideas "good" and some good ideas "bad?"
-
-
Permalink Reply by John Kinser on
-
I will grant you that the Osprey finally seems to work. I still think it will, in the end, prove to be a bad idea that enough time and money overcame.
That ties in with your take on the thread about looking at projects through the long lens of time. If I ask a class "what is the signature building in Sydney, Australia?" They will of course answer the Opera House. What most people don’t know is that it finished 10 years late and at 14 times the original budget. As to scope/quality it was compared to clamshells sticking out of a typewriter case and said to be the worst acoustical structure ever built by man. Yet almost 40 years later no one remembers that; it is judged to be a masterpiece of architecture and the defining element of one of the world's most beautiful harbors. -
Social Media Stats
Tools & Resources
© 2012 Created by GovLoop.
