I heard a really good piece of wisdom from someone the other day. I was checking on the status of a project, and I asked something along the lines of, “Well, how do you feel? Do you feel like this will succeed?” The lead’s reply was actually really good. They said, “Yes, this will work itself out, because it has to.”

I really like where this thought experiment goes. Sure, projects might be cancelled and never completed, but barring that outcome, a project will finish eventually. It might finish on time, on budget, and with the complete original feature list. Or…it might finish late and over budget, because we had to do rework, fix bugs, add other tasks to meet dependencies, and so forth.

The real question as a senior leader is thus not whether or not something will finish at all. It’s whether it can and will finish on time, on budget, and with all the requirements and features. Experienced or exceptionally skilled leads will now how to mitigate risk, avoid creating bugs and rework, identify dependencies, and manage schedules such that the project can be finished meeting all three “iron triangle” constraints.

This has changed the way I think about projects. It is not about whether or not the project is possible at all. It’s about understanding how well, from a project management perspective, you can finish with the time and money resources that you have.