The project management process is fraught with uncertainties. Though they may seem insignificant sometimes, they can lead to serious halts in the workflow, especially when they pile up. Fortunately, some techniques and tools can help you prevent these harmful effects. Read further to learn how to tackle uncertainties effectively, and how scenario planning software can help you.
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Uncertainty in Project Management: Essence and Effects
In simple words, uncertainty is a lack of necessary information and clarity. In project management, you can find numerous examples of uncertainties:
- Changes to the project scope requested by the client;
- A piece of work taking longer than estimated;
- Failure of critical equipment;
- Illness of a critical employee;
- Supply chain delays, and more.
Although risks and uncertainties are sometimes treated as the same phenomenon, they are different. In contrast to risks, which have predictable positive or negative outcomes, the consequences of uncertainties are impossible to predict. The other difference between uncertainties and risks is that the probability of risks can be estimated with specific techniques, while the likelihood of uncertainties is totally unpredictable.
If they occur, uncertainties can disrupt the workflow and cause delays and extra expenditures. But their most harmful aspect is that they can accumulate and lead to really disruptive consequences. For example, if a team member falls ill, this will probably not result in major problems. But what if it’s combined with minor delays from suppliers and the client’s request to make changes to the project scope? Obviously, the snowballing effect of these events won’t contribute to successful project delivery.
So, what can I do about uncertainties in project management if they’re unpredictable, you may think? This is the most common misconception about them. Applying the right approach to dealing with uncertainty and leveraging specific software tools can make a big difference. Let’s go into detail in the next section.
Dealing with Uncertainty with Scenario Planning Software
The techniques listed below will be useful to cope with uncertainties and keep your projects on track.
Avoid deterministic planning and scheduling
Strict plans and schedules won’t give you room for changes—they will only make you replan and reschedule project activities every time any changes occur. In turn, uncertainties can derail deterministic workflows and lead to unpredictable consequences.
Instead, you can set priorities and reprioritize in case any unpredictable changes occur. Prioritization will keep your projects afloat and contribute to the timely delivery of the most important activities even under conditions of uncertainty.
Focus on the project’s due date
You should shift focus from tasks’ due dates to a project’s due date. The latter is much more essential for project success. Some tasks may take longer than others, and some of them can be completed quicker than estimated. So, instead of establishing strict task deadlines, it’s better to set the right priorities and pay attention to milestones’ and the whole project’s due dates.
Establish buffers for Uncertainty in Project Management
Buffers are essential protective mechanisms against uncertainty. We can find numerous examples of buffers in our everyday lives: e.g., leaving earlier for the airport to protect yourself in case of heavy traffic, carrying an umbrella on a cloudy day, keeping money “for a rainy day”, etc. Similarly, we can protect projects by adding time, capacity, financial, or other buffers. For instance, we can add a time buffer to a project’s due date so that uncertainties won’t cause project delays.
Leverage scenario planning software
Scenario planning software is a project or resource management tool with scenario planning (or What-if analysis) features driven by predictive analytics. These capabilities let you run and analyze scenarios before making management decisions. Here’s an overview of the functionality that helps cope with uncertainties.
What-if analysis to handle uncertainty in project management
In some tools, it’s called scenario analysis. This feature utilizes predictive analytics to simulate various scenarios of project outcomes. With its help, you can forecast possible risks or simulate changes to the workflow and assess their consequences. This facilitates informed and reasonable decision-making. How does it help address uncertainty? When an unexpected situation occurs, you can run simulations and test different ways of responding to it. For example, you can see what will happen if you reassign resources or move milestones, and make decisions based on these insights. Therefore, What-if analysis provides reliable assistance when dealing with uncertainties.
Forecasting workload and capacity
Planning projects and their resources is also full of uncertainty. Scenario planning software can reduce it by providing the ability to forecast workload and capacity. As a result, you can plan resources ensuring their balanced workload and prevent future bottlenecks. In turn, the absence of bottlenecks will contribute to smooth project flow and reduce the probability of issues caused by improper workloads.
Setting priorities
As we wrote earlier, prioritization is one of the tools that adds flexibility and protects the workflow in the face of uncertainties. This is especially relevant for a multi-project environment where people are involved in multiple projects at the same time. Prioritization will let them focus on the most essential activities, be productive and flexible if some unexpected events occur.
Tracking buffers
Some scenario planning tools can show you remaining buffers, which helps you track their consumption and assess the state of your project environment. For example, these tools can mark projects with red if there’s no buffer left for them, which means that they require urgent attention. Other solutions provide graphs where you can compare buffers planned vs. consumed.
Project staggering
Predictive analytics can also help reorganize the work of project portfolios. For example, if there are too many projects in execution and their performance is low, you can forecast how many of them are going to be delivered on time and with a delay. Also, scenario planning software can help portfolio managers reschedule projects depending on current resources’ available capacity so that the ones with the highest business value will be delivered on time, while the rest of them are postponed until there’s enough capacity to staff them.
An example of scenario planning software with all the above-mentioned capabilities is Epicflow. It’s an AI-powered resource management software designed to address the uncertainty of complex multi-project environments, especially in engineering-driven industries like aerospace and defense, automotive, manufacturing, software development, pharmaceutical, and others.
Conclusions
- The project management process is full of uncertainties: sudden illness of a critical employee, equipment failure, supply chain delays, etc.
- The impact of small uncertainties is often underestimated. At the same time, they can accumulate and lead to serious consequences.
- While there’s no way to predict uncertainties, you can be prepared for them: establish buffers, prioritize instead of creating deterministic plans and schedules, and leverage a scenario planning software solution.
- Scenario planning tools let you cope with uncertainty in project management by performing scenario analysis, forecasting bottlenecks, planning future projects, and tracking buffer consumption. As a result, you can increase project performance.