Article Excerpt
One effective strategy which considers likely worst-case scenarios as a way to predict potential unknowns. “Studies have shown that one of the most effective methods for improving outcomes is performing a so-called premortem—imagining in advance that an initiative has failed and working to understand the reasons why. This corrects against the natural bias we have to assume our project will be a raging success, and forces us to become the devil’s advocate: If we have to assume it’s a failure, what might account for that?”
As a part of your response to the known and unknown unknowns, there should also be awareness and understanding across the team that there may be situations that call for picking up slack or responsibilities throughout the process to stay on schedule. When everyone can anticipate the possibility of pinch-hitting, this can result in smoother transitions when necessary.
Analysis
How do you plan for unknown variables? It’s almost a paradoxical question. Although you can never truly plan for the future with 100% accuracy, there are ways to better your odds for a good response ahead of the unknown future.
The strategy discussed called “premortem” (known to some as devil’s advocate) works somewhat as a simulation of the future potential problem. If we examine the very worse case scenario and formulate a strategy, then when the actual event happens we can be ready for anything. The problem with this strategy falls upon the fact of coming up with this worse case scenario. Just as there are an infinite amount of solutions in the world, there are also an infinite amount of problems. Thus, we must pick and choose which problems we think are most likely to happen based on problems we have seen in the past, and trends leading into the future. So one could argue that predicting and finding the problem is even more important. Once the problem statement is established, similar to design itself, coming up with solutions is simple.
