198 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
all the parts back together to create a new, improved deliverable. eir
abilities should encourage stretching, even breaking boundaries by chal-
lenging accepted assumptions and rules in an attempt to nd new ways to
enhance cost, schedule, and quality performance. Project managers and
team members exercise both intuition and logic, oen at the sametime.
Some relevant creative abilities required for this process are shown in
Table10.2.
GROUNDWORK FOR CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT
Creativity is absolutely critical to achieve a successful outcome to the
planning process. e context as well as the challenges and constraints
necessitate giving importance to creativity. Aer all, a project entails
TABLE10.1 (Continued )
Planning Process and Challenges and Constraints
Creative Challenge and Constraint Example
Overemphasizing a by-the-book
philosophy
Adhering to a procedure described in
amanagement plan that is counterproductive
because “those are the rules”
Poor communications Not having a communications management plan
Poor coordination Failing to engage the right people in building
aresponsibility assignment matrix
Silos Not encouraging people from other organizations
or disciplines to participate in estimating time to
perform activities
Specialization Failing to encourage stakeholders to increase their
perspective when building a work breakdown
structure
Start and stop ow Designing the schedule in a manner that will
cause people to switch from activity to activity
before completing any of them, thereby causing
people to take time to reacquaint themselves with
the previous work to begin again
Stretching resources too thin Making assignments that result in relying on a few
individuals to perform most of the work for
aproject
Success Allowing people to curtail the momentum of
aproject aer successfully completing a major
phase or deliverable
Creativity and the Planning Process • 199
TABLE10.2
Planning Process and Creative Abilities
Creative Ability Example
Applying reverse thinking Determining in detail what is not in scope versus
what is
Being iconoclastic, even
nihilistic
Questioning the fundamental assumptions behind
time estimates
Being analytical Exploding a deliverable into smaller components
Being intuitive Identifying a potential risk based upon a gut feeling
and limited information
Being precise Calculating a budget down to the last penny
Being self-critical Questioning one’s own assumptions about time
estimates
Being serial Calculating the forward and backward passes in
aschedule
Combining intuition and logic Using the nominal group technique to identify
deliverables and selecting the ones for incorporating
in the work breakdown structure
Conceptualizing Drawing a high-level sketch of the logical
relationships among deliverables in a work
breakdown structure
Embracing ambiguity Calculating time estimates for activity completion
based upon little or no information
Reasoning, such as being logical Building a network diagram
Seeing multiple answers Performing Monte Carlo simulations
Shiing between convergent
and divergent thinking
Building a work breakdown structure by starting at
the bottom and working up to more abstract (higher)
levels in the tree
Shiing from analysis to
synthesis mode of thinking
Taking a random list of activities and grouping them
according to some common criteria (e.g.,deliverable)
Shiing perspectives Reviewing a work breakdown structure from dierent
functional areas (e.g., nance, information
technology, etc.)
Suspending judgment Avoiding the tendency to generate a time estimate to
complete an activity before considering additional
information
Unlearning and relearning Shiing from a single-point estimating technique to a
three-point estimating technique
Using cross-domain thinking Applying both intuition and logic when estimating
time for one or more activities
Using linear thinking Constructing a network diagram
(Continued)
200 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
going into unprecedented territory and so does creativity. For the latter
to enable the former, project managers must establish an atmosphere
in which people feel comfortable expressing their ideas and channel-
ing their energies into creating something useful for furthering the
project. Ownership, trust, and communication are just some ways to
furtherandcapitalize on the creativity of individuals and an entire
team.
Some actions that project managers can take to lay the groundwork for
a creative environment are shown in Table10.3.
TABLE10.2 (Continued )
Planning Process and Creative Abilities
Creative Ability Example
Using nonlinear thinking Drawing data ow diagrams to reect the ow of data
for executing a process described in a management
plan
Using synthesis Tying together the work packages of a WBS into a
logical sequence (reected in a network diagram)
Visualizing Drawing a Gantt or bar chart
TABLE10.3
Planning Process and Groundwork for Creative Environment
Action Example
Align individual and team
goals and objectives
Providing opportunities for team members to work on
activities that they want to do
Build and maintain trust Not attacking a stakeholder for communicating
shortcomings and risks associated with a schedule
resulting from a planning session
Concentrate creative energy Focusing a team’s eort to resolve a potentially severe risk
aecting the quality of a deliverable
Emphasize coordination Building a responsibility assignment matrix that reects
multidisciplinary cooperation in completing activities
Encourage ownership Having people with responsibilities to complete activities
to estimate the time to perform the work
Establish priorities Working with key stakeholders to verify priorities (e.g.,goals
and objectives) so the team can plan accordingly
Make training available Providing traditional and alternative approaches for
training prior to performing assignments
Stress communications Encouraging ongoing sharing of data and information
about a project to develop meaningful plans
Creativity and the Planning Process • 201
GROUNDWORK FOR INDIVIDUAL CREATIVITY
Individuals are the linchpins for enabling creativity on projects. Project
managers, however, need to encourage people to exhibit certain values
and behaviors while others simply need to let naturally creative people be
themselves. Project managers need to encourage and allow for the right
side of the brain to ourish as much as the le. Too oen, the le side has
emphasis, giving preference to following form and function, for example,
at the expense of the capabilities of the right side of the brain, which
encourage breaking the rules, taking a dierent perspective, and liking to
experiment. Project managers need to encourage both sides of the brain
by seeking a balance and skewing the capabilities of one side of the brain
over the other, based on a conscious decision.
Some actions that project managers can take to allow people to be
creative are outlined in Table10.4.
GROUNDWORK FOR TEAM CREATIVITY
Laying the groundwork for individuals to be creative is one half of engen-
dering creativity on a project. Project managers must also make a con-
certed eort to lay additional groundwork for individuals to work together
synergistically. ey should focus on reducing oversight, red tape, and
non-value- added activities, such as irrelevant meetings. ey should also
stress taking the cumulative creative energy of a team and directing it
toward achieving the common vision, goals, and objectives of the project,
but with minimal control.
Some actions that project managers can take to allow a team to be
creative are outlined in Table10.5.
RELEVANT TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
e tools and techniques employed for the planning process span
awide range simply because of all the project management deliverables
to produce. ese tools and techniques will require using both sides
202 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
ofthe brain on individual and group levels. ese tools and techniques
also require and encourage communication and collaboration with oth-
ers to further the exchange of information and knowledge to produce
creative results that enhance executing the project and product life
cycles.
Some common creativity tools and techniques that project managers
can apply for this process are shown in Table10.6.
TABLE10.4
Planning Process and Groundwork for Individual Creativity
Action Example
Be destructive Continuing to emphasize the importance of challenging
assumptions and shattering ones no longer relevant
when building a schedule
Be discontented with the
status quo
Stressing the need for no longer performing in a manner
equivalent to business as usual, such as giving rst guess
time and cost estimates
Be intuitive Encouraging team members to express the gut feeling
about risks pertaining to probability and impact
Be self-condent Providing people with the training, tools, and data to
perform their activities
Be theoretical and
experiential at the same
time
Encouraging team members to think about the dierent
types of risks that could impact a project while
simultaneously trying out potential mitigation strategies
to see if they work
Conceptualize Keeping the vision of the project in everyone’s mind
while building a work breakdown structure
Experience pleasure when
creating
Allowing team members to select activities that they
enjoy performing and reecting on those experiences in
a responsibility assignment matrix
Have a diverse background Encouraging team members to expand their knowledge
and experience by agreeing to work with colleagues on
activities requiring multidisciplinary work
Have a strong sense of
curiosity
Creating and assigning activities that require obtaining
additional knowledge about a topic
Have an interest in the novel Assigning people to activities that they had no previous
knowledge or experience performing
Have the capacity to “break
set”
Including in the work breakdown structure activities that
challenge basic assumptions about a topic
See outside the box Encouraging team members to consider other
perspectives when building the work breakdown
structure
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