The effort investment and law of increasing returns
Written by Chris Knotts, PMP for ASPE-SDLC
Get it right and work hard early. This is one of the main themes that emerges from a basic review of the PMBOK® Guide, and is a basic underpinning of how successful business analysts and project managers approach their job. However, we all know there are competing factors at work as well. In the real world, constant scope creep and ineffectual…sometimes actively frustrating…dealings with stakeholders make this easier said than done. I want to geek out for a moment on some of the important realities of this dynamic, in hopes of arming you with some fortitude for overcoming it, which you’ll have to do if your project is going to succeed.
A few days ago, the cover story of Newsweek focused on recent science that explores the seeming hard-wired tendency in humans to succumb to short-term gain even as a more rational side of our thinking battles against this urge in the quest for what we know will benefit us more. Some folks may also remember the Princeton ’04 research, one of the more defining recent studies to produce evidence that our minds are playing a constant tug-of-war with themselves, which is rooted in physiology. The focus of these studies relates to decision making when it comes to short-term vs. long term gain, and the Newsweek story focused on how this applies to consumer spending and finance. The conclusions point strongly to the fact that we’re instinctually inclined to behave irrationally when it comes to time-value of reward. Click to continue »
