Last week my Grandma took an unplanned trip.  Not one of those fancy ones either where someone serves you drinks with umbrellas.  This was the trip and fall kind of trip.  The kind that some people bounce back up from with relative ease.  In Grandma’s case, this particular trip netted her a trip to the hospital, a broken femur, shoulder and hip and surgery to install rods and pins on all three broken bones.

If you are gonna take the time to fall you might as well give it yer all.

Grandma is still in the hospital and the most unfortunate thing about her very long hospital stay is the fact that she is two plus hours away from me, my siblings and my mother.  This makes getting to the hospital to spend time with grandma, talk to doctors and coordinate her after-care incredibly challenging when we all have our own home and work responsibilities to tend to.

Since Grandma’s fall I have made two trips north to spend time with her.   I wish it could have been more but I and the rest of my family have done what we can to divide the time based on who has flexibility when.  Unfortunately I do not have much to offer in the flexibility department.  Grandma’s hospital stay is not something that warrants me pulling children out of school for but she really does need someone THERE.  She has been so medicated that she is of no assistance to doctors or nurses that need information from her.

Aside from children that need their mother, I have pets that need their owner and work responsibilities that require both my time and my attention.  Now I will tell you that if I had no children or pets to be responsible for I would have taken time away from work without giving it a second thought.  But the reality in the office is that right now, I have much to do.

My current role (Lead Business Systems Analyst) requires me to attend and conduct a lot of meetings with both technical and business representatives.  Requirements need to be gathered, action items followed up on and tasks must be completed.  All of which requires my assistance.

I am lucky that in my current project I have the most ass-kickenist (is so a word) Project Manager on the planet.  That said, she probably has days where she wants to kick the asses of each and every project team member.  I have been a Project Manager and I most definitely understand how she must feel.

Project Management is hard and there are so many things within an organization that can complicate it to levels that define insanity:

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.

The thing that is the hardest to manage is all of the potential unexpected (unplanned) events that can take place during the life of a project.

These events can be internal:

• Another project deployed, went to directly hell, took hostage the best team resources to deal with the hellish issues then spit the resource back to earth 4 weeks later worn and weary to the bone.
• A critical resource leaves the company.
• A critical resource dies.
• Vacation time!  For Development resource! To India!  For TWO! MONTHS!
• Key resource relocates to work in another office for the company.  Time difference is a measly 7 hours.

These events can be external:

• Technical Lead has a terrifying golf cart incident that nets him a broken shoulder and many weeks of bedrest and one arm to write code with for a couple months.
• Business Analyst has Surprise! Surgery! and is out for 6 weeks on leave.
• Elderly relative of team member topples over requiring all the kings horses and all the kings men to put her back together again.  Team member out of office to assist.
• Car broke down.  Spending the day trapped at the shop where the mechanics cannot answer who should own group type fields in the application.

Every project plan has to account for an unexpected event or two or three but how do you account for the delay in getting work done when key resources end up out of the office unexpectedly for 6 weeks?  Then another resource breaks their shoulder?  Then another project goes live (and it doesn’t go well) and your resources are absorbed by fire fighting tasks?

I have worked in software development a loooooooooooonnnng damn time but I am starting to think that my recent projects are possessed.  I have never experienced so many unplanned, unexpected internal and external events on a project.

Tell me about the projects you work on.  How do you manage all the unexpecteds?  Do you work in an environment where you are held tight to delivery dates or are you given room to move them as necessary?  What role do you play on projects in your organization and where are you feeling the most project pain?

Discuss…