If you live with tile floors you know that at some point you will drop something like a cup or plate. Gravity works. You could plan for this by only having plastic or rubber cups and plates or you could have a series of mats, or more expensively change the whole flooring type. 

It’s a great way of thinking about being prepared for what might/will happen on your project. 

Think about when you are starting a project – what are the gravity works moments:

• The end user or client is going to want to change something about the thing you are creating.
• People on the team, doing the work, know stuff you don’t as project manager. They have skills, and can adapt and adopt new skills as they work.
• The cost, time, quality, scope (insert any other factor) will cause you to worry, re-plan, add, delete or make a change to what is delivered. 
• Unexpected changes to upper level management, the technology, the environment, the pandemic levels will cause a gravity works moment.

Using Agile Project Management techniques will help. Only planning in small bursts (sprints), having a great feedback loop built in with the customers will help. Experimenting, demonstrations and user involvement in the product description and outcomes needed will go some way to mitigating the ‘gravity works’ moments.

Kanban is more than just a board on the wall, it works to limit work in progress so that you can plan what’s to be done and not stretch beyond breaking point. Again, it’s a technique to minimise the impact of gravity working.

Carol Speirs

1 September 2022