Scary Situations
You might be wondering what Halloween has to do with project management. You would be surprised to learn they have quite a few similarities and some are comical. Like Halloween, Project Managers (PMs) also encounter ghosts or skeletons from their past projects. The fear of failure of the same mistakes is a monster that destroys a project’s progress because they did not learn from their mistakes or lessons learned. Also, PMs should look for red flags or zombies when managing your risks and be careful about the factors that can lead your project towards failure. Without effective risk management, it is impossible to complete your project on schedule. Let’s look at other scary situations.
Tackling the Most Critical Risk
Risk comes in many flavors in IT, but the most critical risk is a Service Disrupting Event (SDE). An SDE is an unplanned event that causes an information system to be inoperable for a length of time that stops the organization’s ability to conduct normal day-to-day business activities – which can be very scary. These events can range from a hurricane to cyber-attacks to a simple infrastructure or implementation failure. The inability to recover rapidly from an SDE can result in a company losing millions and —worse – shut it down permanently. So, it is no surprise that most medium to large-size organizations are prepared for these events by having a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place, which should be tested out at least one weekend per year to make sure it works.
DR for infrastructure systems is a set of tools, processes, and policies that help organizations regain access to their IT infrastructure after a disaster. Many major companies offer DR services, including cloud-based services, backup services, and other options.
Less is More
This philosophy emphasizes the idea that simplicity and restraint can often have a more powerful impact than excessive ornamentation or complexity. For example, it can be tempting to go over the top with decorations in the theme of Clark Griswold’s lighting excesses in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, but resist! Remember that the biggest scares come from what isn’t seen but is implied. When your stakeholders are trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink into a project’s scope, help them to focus on the minimum required to achieve the expected outcomes. This will help to contain costs, reduce risks, and deliver value sooner.
Scary Unknowns
While half the fun of going into a haunted house is the suspense of not knowing what lies around all the creepy corners, there is nothing fun about unknown in project management. As a PM, I like to always prepare for the worst, the shocking, the alarming, and have solutions ready to go. For example, the project scope is expanding well beyond the original agreement. If this happens, don’t call Ghostbusters’ hotline, but pull out the Project Charter and remind managers what was agreed upon as “in scope” and “out of scope.” If there is continued scary pushback, bring in the project sponsor who has the ultimate authority to bring everyone back to the original intent and business case for the project.
No Screaming
Save the blood curdling scream or witch hunt for Halloween and not your project meetings. Rarely does a day go by where everything will go according to plan, and it is how you react to those situations that will make or break the rest of the project. Don’t let what’s hiding around the corner distract you, you’ve got this! Also, displaying a sense of humor helps you to remain cool under pressure and to keep problems in perspective.
It is my belief; you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you understand the most amusing. – Sir Winston Churchill
Don’t Believe It’s Dead
In every horror movie, just when the hero believes they have successfully eliminated the monster, it finds a way to come back to life. The first Halloween movie (1978) which cost $300,000 and grossed $70 million had one of the most unexpected comeback scenes. In this movie, Michael Myers appeared to be a run-of-the-mill psychopathic human being. It was only at the very end of the film, after Dr. Loomis has shot Michael a few times at direct range and he’s fallen from the second story of a house and managed to get away, that you finally realize he’s going to come back. Michael Myers, the antagonist, has appeared in the franchise’s thirteen films which he chooses not to talk and doesn’t seem to have a rhyme or reason for his killing spree and seems unstoppable. Keep in mind, it’s always possible that Micheal could be resurrected in another movie which could be called a Prequel. The impact that Halloween had on horror, and in particular slasher films (e.g., A Nightmare on Elm Street), would reverberate throughout cinema.
While it can be satisfying to resolve a tricky project issue, we need to remain vigilant to the possibility that it could happen again. Recurring issues in projects are so commonly related to one simple mistake – not looking back at the history of the project. Project learning is so invaluable, yet businesses often gloss over the details and miss important insights. Also, if an issue had been previously identified as a risk, we now have further quantitative data regarding its impact which we could use to be better prepared in the future.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
– George Santayana, Spanish-born American philosopher, poet, humorist
Halloween Fun Facts
- In Ireland, where Halloween originated about 2,000 years ago, people celebrate by setting off fireworks.
- In Germany, it’s tradition for people to hide their knives on Halloween night.
- Transylvania is in central Romania and is a popular destination for Halloween because of its association with the fictional character, Dracula.
- New York (Greenwich Village in Manhattan) is home to the world’s largest Halloween parade.
- Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is a funk song that came out in 1982 which features lyrics and sound effects evoking horror films. This song has returned to the Billboard Hot 100 chart multiple times due to its popularity around Halloween.
- In 1962, the song “Monster Mash” once reached #1 on the Billboard charts. Every Halloween this song comes back to haunt us!
Your feedback is always welcome here in the comments, and in the Community Discussion Forum!
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