Obstacle Loops:
Identifying Project Obstacles
Project risks, issues, challenges, constraints, and weaknesses are all potential obstacles that can prevent a project from meeting its objectives and success criteria.
Identifying and prioritizing real and potential obstacles at the beginning of a project helps inform scope, decision making and enable early mitigation strategies to be developed. The Obstacle Loop is similar to a premortem.
The process of identifying project obstacles can surface some very toxic behaviors in people and is often plagued by our conscious and subconscious cognitive biases.
With a place of psychological safety built-in, stakeholder engagement leads to the sharing and discussion of obstacles without fear of reprisal… critical to uncovering meaningful information that could impact the project later.
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Many project teams turn the exercise into a formal risk management session that frustrates stakeholders with the amount of time and process required to execute. Managing formal risks is important for the project but does not need to involve the extended stakeholder group at every step of the process.
Obstacle Loops Deliver ...
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the transition from a “me” to “we” project by identifying, debating, and prioritizing obstacles together.
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added value to the project through an innovation and creativity lens instead of just a traditional risk lens.
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a better co-understanding of how each stakeholder’s obstacles could impact individual and project deliverables. Critical thinking that delivers pure gold!
Obstacle Loops permit stakeholders to think freely about what might go wrong.
Obstacle Loops Example ...
Identifying Project Obstacles Example:
Sales & Marketing Stakeholder Engagement
The VP of Sales for a Fortune 500 beverage company had initiated a project to outperform their annual sales objective. In the past, they had implemented a project risk assessment which took months to execute, involved only a handful of key and very opinionated sales executives and delivered poor results, alignment and buy-in.
