Dog spoor and Project Managers...really?

Did that just happen??  Yes, it did...

Somehow we've managed to tie dog spoor into one of my favorite themes in Project Management:  getting the right answer by mistake, or "unexpected wonderfulness" as Rick Brenner eloquently put it at the November Central Virginia Chapter of PMI dinner meeting. 

So what does it mean?  Did Norwegian explorers truly plan to follow a "bread crumb" trail of dog poop back from the South Pole back to the safety of their home base or was that just some sort of nasty, unexpected wonderfulness?  Who thought that would be a viable option?  But it was...they made it home, where as their British competitors did not...so much for risk management planning...or was it?

Why is it that the more we decentralize and adopt a guerrilla approach to managing projects, the more successful we actually become?  There is significant talk on the streets regarding Agile - is this the appropriate term for this guerrilla approach that always seems to work best?  I for one consider myself "old school" when it comes to running a project - tell me exactly what you want done and I'll get it to you on time, within budget, as expected - every time, at a price.  I don't react well to this "we're not really sure what we want, but we'll know it when we see it so just get started" approach...unless we drop the traditional measures of earned value and embrace the trial  & error, hit or miss perspective and actually accept that as reality when the things we never really defined don't turn out the way we wanted them to...

The Project Management Institute subscribes to what we call a "traditional" approach to Project Management - in PMI-ese that means building the project to support Earned Value - in English it means an inordinate amount of planning, precision and expense.  The benefits of this can certainly be discussed, but for those of us with that alpha-personality, laser-focused, just get it done mentality there is something to be said for following a trail of poo and declaring victory.  I'd do it, and probably find a way to rationalize this as something that was actually planned in advance...