3. Locate landmines early and cheaply

"Landmines" are undetected assumptions that can "blow up" project schedules, budgets and success.

When you look at your past “high-stakes” projects that failed, can you identify any landmines… something that blew up budgets, schedules or reputations? Were they detectable before they blew up? And what would have happened if the project team had spotted them earlier?

When asked these questions, most teams agree on the landmines that killed their project… and that they could have done a better job spotting them earlier. While post-mortems are fine, you’ll do better with a pre-mortem. That is, consider what landmines might kill your project… and then defuse them if you can.

Consider what you do and do not know as you begin your project. You have some…

• Facts: You know what you know
• Assumptions: You know what you think
• Questions: You know what you don’t know
• Surprises: You don’t know what you don’t know

Your team needs a methodology for organizing all the information… so it can drive from uncertainty to certainty on those assumptions that could kill your project. This is precisely what AIM’s Minesweeper de-risking was designed to do (next article). You can think of this as conducting a pre-mortem—instead of a post-mortem—to understand where your potential project-killers are.

For more, download the AIM white paper, Innovating in Unfamiliar Markets, and view the Minesweeper Project De-risking video.

Keywords: Landmine, assumption, FAQS, facts, assumptions, questions, surprises, pre-mortem, de-risking, high-stakes