{"id":1258,"date":"2025-08-14T13:55:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T13:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testv81.demowebsitelinks.com\/AMAR\/?p=1258"},"modified":"2025-08-14T13:55:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T13:55:59","slug":"seeing-the-big-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testv81.demowebsitelinks.com\/AMAR\/seeing-the-big-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing the Big Picture"},"content":{"rendered":"
Recently, in my career management efforts to retool myself to remain relevant in the current marketplace, I have embarked on a Graduate Certificate with DeVry University in Big Data and Analytics.\u00a0 As any good college course should do, from time to time, it provokes some introspection and deep thought.\u00a0 In this post, I discuss the need for the Skillful PM to be able to see the big picture and being able to “see the forest for the trees.”
\nI wanted to share something which I hope may help some of my readers in this area.\u00a0 Although it is\u00a0a story about failure<\/b>, I hope the reader will be able to grasp the points which will help them succeed.
\nSome time ago I had a project administrator working for me who was very good at her job.\u00a0 She gathered updates and kept project plans up to date and generally helped the work stay on track.\u00a0 She was good to escalate issues and to help people figure out what dates they could actually commit to and attain.\u00a0 In her role, she was a top performer.
\nShe came to me and expressed her desire to advance in her career into the role of being a full-blown project manager.\u00a0 For both of us, this seemed both logical and very attainable.\u00a0 I asked her a few key questions to see if she had some experience in areas where I felt it required skills needed by a project manager, which her current role didn’t require.\u00a0 Specifically, I found out that she had an affinity for math, for logic, and she enjoyed playing chess.
\nYou may ask why those three things were on my list as potential qualifiers for a project manager (PM)?\u00a0 The skillful PM (Sheppard, 2017) (Sheppard, 2019, TheSkillfulPM.com) has to do a lot of math.
\n\u00a0 \u00a0Math.<\/strong>\u00a0Sometimes it is estimating the time needed for deliverables based upon how much work it takes (how many people and how much time) to deliver one completed product, and then dividing that into the whole volume of work required to ensure that we have sufficient time and resources to achieve the project objectives.\u00a0 At other times, it is creating weighted averages or performing Monte Carlo Simulations to determine a probable completion date when many factors are still not fully clear.
\n\u00a0 \u00a0Logic.<\/strong>\u00a0The skillful PM has to be able to take big problems and break them down into many smaller problems, order those smaller problems based on both logical and resource-driven inter dependencies and guide the team to create a project plan that will deliver the project objectives within the “triple-threat” of project constraints of quality, time, and resources. The skillful PM also needs to be able use both deductive and inductive reasoning (Wikipedia, 2019).\u00a0 S\/he must be able to draw conclusions about where facts are leading, and where those facts came from.\u00a0 Or, to be a bit more scholarly, the skillful PM needs to be able to reason from the specific to the general and from the general to the specific.
\n\u00a0 \u00a0Chess.<\/strong>\u00a0The skillful PM has to be able to both look ahead and plan ahead, considering contingencies and alternate courses of action, but also has to be able to consider the motives and potential actions of ALL the people impacted by the project (stakeholders).\u00a0 Failure to anticipate both good and bad things can result in both minor and major setbacks or even complete failure of a project.\u00a0 All of these skills are things that competent chess players do as they play.\u00a0 It is said that ordinary chess players play 3 moves ahead.\u00a0 Really good chess players are playing 8 moves ahead.\u00a0 Master chess players are playing 12 to 20 moves ahead.\u00a0 If you don’t believe that, consider that The Queens Gambit, also known as The Fools Mate, can produce checkmate, ending the game, just four moves into the start of the game.
\nHaving determined that she seemed to have the requisite inclinations and abilities, I agreed to help her become a project manager.\u00a0 I gave her a project to manage, working under my supervision.
\nContrary to many popular views of project management, PM work does not begin with the plan.\u00a0 PM work begins with determining the root cause(s) of the problem(s) to be solved with the project.\u00a0 Failure to execute this step properly means that even a successful project can be a failure, because it treats the symptom, not the problem.\u00a0 Knowing this, I set her to her tasks to gather information on the team, the work, and the problem(s) the project was intended to fix.
\nShe did a great job of gathering information.\u00a0 She conducted interviews, captured responses, assessed resources, quantified work, and documented processes.\u00a0 She brought all her findings to me and I helped her organize them into a coherent presentation so that all the facts could be easily seen.\u00a0 Then, I looked at her findings with her and asked her, “Ok, so what does all this mean?”
\nShe looked at me for a moment and then began to repeat the facts she had shown me.\u00a0 I stopped her.\u00a0 Again I asked, “So what?”\u00a0 She stared at me blankly.\u00a0 I then asked her, “Do you want to know what these facts tell me?”\u00a0 She did.
\nI proceeded to tell her the conclusions I could draw from the facts she had gathered.\u00a0 Conclusions which pointed to the root causes of the problems and thereby also suggested the probable cures for those problems.
\nShe said, “Now that you say it, I can grasp that they your conclusions are totally connected to these findings.\u00a0 But, I cannot understand, at all, how you got from these facts to those conclusions.”\u00a0 She was unable to use inductive reasoning and move from the facts to the conclusions.\u00a0 Likewise, she was unable to see certain facts and deduce their roots.
\nUnfortunately, this lack of logical reasoning ability meant that she was also unable to draw conclusions from her findings about what objectives needed to be achieved to meet the larger project objective, and what tasks needed to be done, in what order, to meet the subordinate objectives.\u00a0 In short, she could run a project plan, but she couldn’t build a good project plan.
\nUnfortunately, she failed as a project manager.\u00a0 I had to step in with the client she had been working with and redo the engagement.
\nI hope, by now, you are seeing some of my point.\u00a0 Her ability to see the big picture (the forest) and break that down into the individual trees, and her ability to see the trees and extrapolate the forest from them was what she needed to succeed.
\nThere will always be need for data scientists who are wizards with data.\u00a0 They know their tools and their data so well that they can answer any question about the data that you care to ask.\u00a0 However, if they don’t know the questions to ask, because they don’t understand the big picture of how the data relates to the business of the business, then they will forever be no more than a technician.\u00a0 They will end up working for someone who may not be able to spell SQL but who knows how to ask the right questions and relate the answers to the real needs of the business.<\/p>\n

Respectfully submitted,
\nTom S.
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\n<\/strong>References<\/strong><\/p>\n