Why I love basketball…

The best thing I have done in recent weeks was to start going to basketball games with my son. Almost every Sat night we grab a bag of popcorn and join other fans to cheer for our local premiership team.

Apart from being fun and exciting to watch (and play!), I love basketball because there is so much we project managers can learn from it! I can’t help myself and watching the games I continually look for similarities with the project management world. And, there are so many! Here are just a few:

• Scope - it couldn’t be clearer, all passes must be well planned and agreed, avoiding useless passes that do not add any value, i.e. do not lead to earning at least two points or preventing the other team from doing so
• Time – there are only 40min in the game, event your Sponsor can't grand an extension, so need to plan and execute all the smart moves within this boundary
• Quality - oh, the spectators, including my 5 year old son, are very quick to let you know when you’re failing on this one!
• Risk - every move the players and the coach make is about managing risks
• Human resources - particularly teamwork and R & R’s, unless the team has a strong agreement and execution of the agreed roles, they are doomed for failure
• Communication - with most rounds taking less than a minute, how the team communicates can make or break it; use of codes, sign language and "short-hand" to communicate “secret” strategies requires a lot of planning and practice, something we often undermine in the project world when it comes to communication
• Integration - executing each of the strategies on the court is all about integration; regardless how good a move an individual player makes it’s pointless, or sometimes even impossible, unless it’s built into a broader picture; one such brilliant chain of moves that led to a spectacular finish was when the middle player unexpectedly (or so to an unaware observer) made a long pass towards what looked like an empty space, only to have the ball caught by another player who appeared from nowhere, caught the ball mid-air and immediately placed it in the hoop! It was an incredible display of not only skill but also communication, teamwork, timing, and the good old integration.

If you are in project management, you will most likely notice that I’ve left 2 components out: cost and procurement. This was intentional and I’d like to encourage you to post a comment with your suggestions on how these two aspects of project management present themselves in a basketball game (trying to stay from the obvious like buying equipment and managing the budget – be creative!)

One of my previous blogs was about useless discussions… that post was also inspired by a basketball game and again it’s so relevant to project management. Read it here

Happy Bouncing!