Inspection

I’m reading Ellen MacArthur’s book, “Taking on the World”. She is arguably one of the greatest sailors around. It’s her story of her life leading up to and including her amazing race in the Vendee Globe.

Before she ever got to the Vendee, she spent years working on other people’s boats. She would prep them, repair them, and otherwise set them up for the big races. She had to know the systems of these amazing race machines inside and out.

These were largely solo racers that she was working with. Once they left the harbor and crossed the start line, they were on their own with no outside help for weeks, even months. Preparation for these racers was critical. Any undetected flaws would very likely come back to haunt them somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Not an attractive thought.
She would spend hours, days, weeks reviewing, inspecting these boats for weaknesses. She would be looking for the telltale warning signs of problems, like rust on the connecting terminals, minute cracks in the paint around areas of stress – anything that would indicate a possible problem.

She was engaging in a form of risk management. The inspections she was doing were designed to uncover the risks that might jeopardize not only the race, but perhaps even the sailor’s life. This sort of assessment goes on all the time in the sailing world. When you go to buy a boat, you get a survey. The point of the survey is to uncover risks to the buyer. Have you ever watched a surveyor in action? They use a lot of checklists.

I’ve watched some great sailors prepare for races too. You can see them wandering over a boat, running their hands over every inch, opening lockers and sticking their head in, tugging on lines – looking for risk. I imagine they have a mental checklist that they are using too.

When we are managing our projects, how do we inspect them? We can use checklists. We can ask others for advice (something that Ellen did very well). We can make things visible – the equivalent of sticking our heads into lockers and looking around. There are a variety of things we can to to look for risk. Being a good project manager, like being a good sailor, means being aware of and constantly on the watch for risk.