Are you working on a Project or Advancing a Vision towards higher goals?

⏳ Projects have determined scope, cost and timeline. They have a beginning and an end. They have expected benefits that can be determined a priori. They progress via pre-determined milestones, which might or might not contain intrinsic value. Their governance mechanism is well understood.

🌱 Advancing visions can be a much more complex endeavour, probably compared to raising children, as they behave like living organisms, representing nothing but potential, which God only knows what they could become. They have a fixed baseline cost with an evolving scope and timeline. They run continuously over the years, sensing and responding to the stimuli of customers and stakeholders.

⏳ Projects are concave in nature. Succeeding means not failing to deliver the success criteria defined a priori. If everything goes right, nothing goes wrong. They have diminishing marginal returns.

🌱 Advancing visions, on the other hand, is convex in nature. As you increase your investment or effort, marginal benefits increase, bringing potentially disproportionately greater returns.

Over the last few years, more and more organisations worldwide have been moving from projects to products. Consequently, one of the following is happening:

Mainstream organisations are still bending their Project Management Office to build and scale Products using their project constructs and governance mechanisms.
Fast-movers and progressive organisations are building fit-for-purpose innovation funnels, funding and governance models, prioritisation and benefits realisation frameworks, change management capabilities, etc., driven by a renewed identity of a Value Management Office.

Lately, I started to be extra conscious about the “Value Management Office” terminology. We don’t manage value. We develop, nurture, grow, and unleash value, akin to nurturing a child who represents nothing but potential.

Management = Concave 📉 Development = Convex 📈