Principle 2 – Successful projects first create a shared understanding
Misunderstandings rarely arise because people are pursuing different goals. Far more often, everyone believes they are talking about the same thing – while each person understands something different. Successful projects therefore invest early in a shared vision of the target state.
There is a sentence I hear again and again in projects: “We all know what this is about.”
Almost every time, this sentence is spoken shortly before it becomes clear that this is exactly what is not true. The fascinating thing is that no one is misleading anyone.
Everyone is convinced they understand the goal. And yet, weeks or months later, discussions arise about what was actually supposed to be delivered.
Did “migration” mean the technical transition, or the organisational rollout as well? Does “go-live” mean that a system is available in production – or that the business can actually work with it? Is a project complete when the last piece of software has been installed, or when the customer has achieved the expected benefit?
Questions like these may sound trivial.
In practice, however, they often determine whether a project runs smoothly or repeatedly has to realign itself. The more complex an initiative becomes, the more dangerous seemingly unambiguous terms become. Words often create the illusion of shared understanding. But shared understanding does not arise from words alone.
Frank Gehry addresses this problem in a remarkable way. Before construction begins, his team invests an extraordinary amount of time in models, alternatives and joint discussions. At first glance, one might assume that these models are intended to perfect the architecture. I believe their real purpose is different:
They create a shared reality.
They ensure that clients, engineers, specialist planners and construction companies are no longer talking about their own individual ideas, but about the same model. At first, the quality of the model is secondary. Its real value lies in making differences in understanding visible – not during construction, but long before it begins.
The more I explored this way of working, the more often I was reminded of situations from my own project experience.
Aus der Praxis
In my role as an Estimation Validator, I regularly review numerous project estimates. The discussions are often impressively precise.
We talk about person-days, work packages, dependencies and critical paths.
Sometimes two effort estimates differ by only a few hours. And yet I repeatedly have the impression that something crucial is missing. Not in the numbers, but before them.
Only as the discussions progress does it sometimes become clear that different teams are assuming different scopes of work.
Everyone is estimating diligently – just not the same reality.
We often associate planning with precision. The more precise the numbers, the safer the project appears. But precision and certainty are not the same thing. A project plan can be mathematically excellent. If the underlying assumptions are understood differently, that precision does not create certainty. It merely creates a very precise description of uncertainty.
A precise estimate of an unclear scope does not make a project safer. It merely gives uncertainty a number.
This sentence now accompanies me through almost every major project. Not because effort estimates are unimportant, but because they often start in the wrong place. A project plan answers the question: When will we do something?
A shared vision of the target state answers the much more important question:
Why are we doing it at all – and how will we later know that we have succeeded?
Perhaps good planning is therefore not about defining as many activities as possible as early as possible. Perhaps it is about first ensuring that everyone involved genuinely has the same future in mind. At this point, it becomes clear that responsibility alone is not enough.
Even when it is clear who decides and what goal is being pursued, one crucial challenge remains: how can this shared understanding be maintained over weeks, months or even years? Frank Gehry’s answer is: not through more documents, but through models that make thinking visible.
And that is where the next principle of successful projects begins.
