¿Cómo se pueden gestionar los riesgos de un proyecto de alta ambigüedad?

👉🏽 Unclear goals and objectives: What are you aiming to achieve? Vague definitions of success create fertile ground for unexpected risks. 👉🏽 Evolving requirements and technologies: Is the landscape shifting beneath your feet? Unforeseen changes can throw your plans into disarray. 👉🏽 Limited data and knowledge: Are you sailing blind? Lack of information breeds uncertainty, making it hard to anticipate challenges. 👉🏽 Complex systems and dependencies: Are you untangling a Gordian knot? Interconnected factors can amplify the impact of unforeseen events. Once you pinpoint the ambiguity's origin, you can start to address it proactively.

In my experience, ambiguity is a symptom of lack of alignment. According to researchers, including my own global study on project performance, miss alignment creates confusion, poor definition and limited results. All which effect the teams ability to properly produce a viable work breakdown structure. The symptoms are heavily increased in true Agile environments.

Teleology directs us to start with the end in mind. Many frameworks to include Agile stem from the empirical process control theory. Which implies that you learn through observation. Establishing your hypothesis focuses on two concepts: 1 - listening to your stakeholders and helping them define an end goal or vision 2 - creating milestones based on critical success factors which are established by helping the stakeholders understand the value points of their vision In my experience, doing this is more art than science, but when done right the success rate of actually attaining your end goal increases significantly. ~Dr.H

👉🏽 Challenge your existing beliefs: Don't cling to unvalidated assumptions. Question everything, from market trends to technical feasibility. 👉🏽 Document your "unknowns": Explicitly list the areas shrouded in ambiguity. This transparency helps everyone stay informed and agile. 👉🏽 Develop testable hypotheses: Don't just guess, experiment! Craft clear hypotheses about potential risks and design ways to test them through prototypes, user research, or data analysis. 👉🏽 Embrace iterative learning: Be prepared to adjust your course as you learn. New information should inform new hypotheses and risk assessments.

Experimentation is critical. Both in science and in business, establishing a prediction (or hypothesis) allows you to explore the “art of the possible”. Meaning, if you don’t experiment you really won’t know what is truly posible. In project management, when the business problem is established, your predictive mind begins to assume an end date based on the data. As the project timeline progresses and more data is collected, the end date becomes clearer. By continuously evaluating your timeline based on delivery, you are constantly testing your hypothesis, and experimenting with the parameters. Regardless of the approach, project managers are constantly experimenting with data, in hopes of predicting an accurate target.

In my experience, risk is subjective. Depending on a companies market position, and how far along the journey they are (from startup to big corp), the risk vectors may be vastly different. Still, properly accounting for the risks associated with typical project management methodology preserves not only the integrity of the timeline and deliverables, but also builds confidence in the stakeholders. Maintaining a risk register that accurately resembles the companies risk profile is critical to a PM, as it allows them to establish certain boundaries and escalate as things come close to the boundry.

I honestly love this approach and it is one I have used throughout my career. In fact, one of the discoveries of my global study in 2021, was that establishing friendly / common ground through humor and problem solving helped teams come closer together and alleviate both ambiguity and misalignment. The only thing I would add is, countinous maturity through retrospective. This is often overlooked by even the best of PMs and it’s the most critical part of the project. When done right, and frequent, the team is ever-growing and consistently improving and the projects naturally succeed.