How Project Leaders Can Tame Unpredictability
Vicki Turner
Summary.
Today’s business environment is characterized by constant change on a macro scale, but in our daily lives, it’s often the smaller unpredictabilities that threaten to derail our projects and decisions. This article draws on the agile methodology to offer project leaders a tool for managing unpredictability: vertical slicing. Each slice builds on the previous one to flesh out a large-scale initiative.If the past five years have taught us anything, it’s that change is still the only constant in business. We’ve had to navigate a global pandemic, geopolitical crises, supply chain disruptions, a shift to hybrid work, and the rise of generative artificial intelligence. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would put it, we’re facing many more “unknown unknowns” than “known unknowns” nowadays. But in our daily work lives, it’s often the smaller-scale unpredictabilities that threaten to derail our projects and decisions, particularly under unfamiliar circumstances brought on by macro events.