In the book, Decisive: How to make Better Choices in Life and Work, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, they discuss great suggestions on how to analyze decisions in the context of home, work, family, and everything in between. The idea is that if we can analyze the scope of the decision in the correct context then we can create more valuable and tailored choices to our everyday conundrums. In the book, I noticed that the “WRAP” method correlates nicely with the Project Scope Management concepts discussed in the PMBOK 6th edition (referenced throughout this article). In this article, my goal is to show how the Decisive book and WRAP framework makes project management principles more accessible as a professional acumen and a life skill.
The suggestions include a WRAP framework, which stand for:
- Widen Your Options: PMBOK Chapter 5- Plan Scope Management and Collect Requirements (create multiple approaches and benchmark them)
- Reality Test Your Assumptions: PMBOK Chapter 5- Collect Requirements and Define Scope (alternatives analysis and benchmark it)
- Attain Distance Before Deciding: PMBOK Chapter 5- Create WBS (decomposition and expert judgment)
- Prepare to Be Wrong: PMBOK Chapter 5- Validate Scope and Control Scope (inspection, voting, decision making, data analysis: variance analysis, and trend analysis)
What I enjoyed most about the book are the villains that the keep us from making good, better, and best decision. They have reared their ugly heads in the last few government projects I have worked on.
The four 4 Villians that keep us from WRAP(ping) our decisions:
- Narrow Frame– when it may be best to widen our options
- Confirmation Bias – when it may be best to reality test our assumptions
- Short Term Emotions – when it may be best to attain emotional or psychological distance before deciding
- Overconfidence – when it may be best to prepare how to bookend and test the future or prepare ways to improve the decision-making process
When we widen our options, Decisive details how we oftentimes are seeking to use some project management tools such as:
A. Avoiding a narrow frame using expert judgment, data analysis, and meetings.
B. Multi-tracking or considering multiple options simultaneously is similar to multi-criteria decision analysis and mind mapping project tools
C. When we find someone who has solved your problem we can use meetings.
When we reality test our assumptions project management professionals:
A. “Ooch” (page 135 of Decisive) or prototype as in the collect requirements stage and define scope areas of the PMBOK.
B. “Consider the opposite” (page 92 of Decisive) by gathering data (context diagram, surveys, and questionnaires in the PMBOK)
C. “Zoom Out and Zoom In” (page 115 of Decisive) by collecting requirements in the form of interviews, focus groups, benchmarking
When we “Attain Distance before Deciding” as Dan and Chip Heath discuss in chapter 8, project management professionals overcome short term emotion by creating a WBS that:
A. Decomposes the work into manageable parts using expert judgment
B. This decomposition allows us to do what Dan and Chip Heath describe as “Honoring our Core Priorities,” in Chapter 9 of the “Decisive” book.
When we “Prepare to be Wrong” by bookending the future as discussed in Chapter 10 in Decisive, project managers:
A. Bookend the future by creating scope baseline and assumption logs and creating the best and worst case scenarios
B. When we “set a tripwire“, as chapter 11 of Decisive discusses, project management professionals cap the risk with the performance measurement baseline created from the scope baseline
C. When we “trust the process” as Dan and Chip Heath detailed, project management professionals use inspection, voting, decision making, data analysis: variance analysis, and trend analysis tools to validate and control the scope.
I highly recommend the book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices In Life and Work, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath for project management professionals and persons interested in making better decision in life and work. This book taught me that common sense isn’t so common anymore and all professionals could use a little more pragmatism and a little less esoteric jargon. And after reading this book, I hope you would agree.
Curated by Emi Akiode, PMP, http://www.linkedin.com/in/emiakiode
Check out the Decisive book here.
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