We Can Control the Ship and Sails, But Not The Wind and Waves
All project work operates in the presence of uncertainty. Uncertainty creates risk to the success of the project. Uncertainty comes in only two forms:
- Epistemic uncertainty, which is reducible, meaning we can take specific actions to reduce the uncertainty that creates. Those risk handling activities are placed in the project, budgeted, scheduled, and tracked for their progress to their planned reduction.
- Aleatory uncertainty, which is irreducible, meaning we can only provide margin to protect the project from the risk created by this uncertainty. The amount of margin needed is modeled with Monte Carlo Simulation, assigned to appropriate points in the project and tracked through a margin burndown chart.
A nice presentation on managing an agile project like a sailor is John Goodpasture's work Agile for Project Managers - A Sailor's Look at Agile