When projects are delivered late or over-budget, it invariably comes down to a planning problem. Either planning went for too long, or there wasn’t enough.

To avoid this, we need to understand the potential impact of what we don’t know.  Leaving things unknown becomes risky when the project is large, the deadlines are business-critical, or it’s the first time our people have performed this type of work.

In these cases, we need to invest heavily in the planning phase and continue planning concurrent to early project roll-out.

On the other hand, we can live with uncertainty when deadlines are not business-critical, or staff have done the work before, or making a mistake won’t have a significant financial impact.

In these cases, we should speed up planning and move quickly into project delivery.

Too much planning when it’s not required, and under planning when it is, will waste time and money. So it pays to get this right, and we do this by considering the potential impact of what we don’t know.