Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We often assume desired outcomes when recommending practices. It often helps to know your desired destination.

Once again, our government recently issued dietary guidelines. Some hailed the guidelines while others went as far as to say that our government officials were bribed. How else could they issue such bad advice?

Perhaps those who issued the guidelines and those who hated the guidelines had different outcomes in mind. Consider:

To move your body in the direction of blank-number-1, consume more blank-number-2 and expend more blank-number-3.

We rarely fill in blank-number-1. We all assume that we all agree on blank-number-1. I doubt that even a third of us agree on that. (I’ll skip the joke about what we do when we assume. That exercise is left to the reader.)

Examples for blank-number-1 include:

• low body mass index
• high muscle content
• resistance to flu
• resistance to cancer
• resistance to close personal relationships

It seems to me that blank-number-2 and blank-number-3 will differ greatly depending on what we chose for blank-number-1.

Let’s pull this back towards project management. Everyone knows that all practices we do should be aimed towards agile project management. I guess I am not with everyone as I know there are many projects for which agile is the worst possible approach.

Please, state the desired outcome before recommending how to achieve it.