I’ve heard many people say “Never assume anything!” in response to someone saying “I assumed …” just after something has gone wrong. I’ve had the same thought jump from the back of my mind as soon as I think “we’ll have to assume…”.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been working at getting a complex project back on track. As well as being quite complex there are a lot of unknowns especially surrounding the design of the new system. Previous project performance means we don’t have the luxury of waiting until the evaluation and testing phase is complete before we begin building the new system which in turn means assumptions will have to be made.
I always get a little nervous when making assumptions, however within every assumption there lies a risk related to the assumption being untrue. In the real world unfortunately assumptions have to be made but the important thing to understand and communicate to stakeholders is the risk associated with that assumption turning out to be wrong.
Do you take this approach assumption management? Did you find this article useful? If so, please leave a comment.
Until the next Post…
