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Use your Scrying Orb 🔮

A good part of project management is just seeing what’s coming before it arrives. While it might sound like magic, this ability to foresee potential outcomes keeps your project on track and your delivery on time. Practice honing your predictive skills, or as I like to call it, “use your Project Management Scrying Orb.”

What’s Actually in the Orb

Foresight is a habit, not a gift. You look at what just happened and work out what it touches. And there’s nothing mystical inside the orb — it’s the boring artifacts you already have, looked at together instead of one at a time. The dependency chain. The shared calendar. Who’s on leave in week 3. Which approval hasn’t come back. Individually they tell you nothing. Side by side, most of next month is already visible.

Imagine a situation where Developer 1 has a delay on a critical task. Instead of waiting for the delay to ripple through the project, take immediate action:

  • Assess the Impact: Consider how this delay affects QA, the next task in the pipeline, and any dependencies in design or other departments.
  • Adjust Schedules: Based on your assessment, make necessary adjustments to the project schedule and communicate these changes to the team.
  • Implement Contingencies: If the delay is likely to cause significant disruption, activate any contingency plans you’ve prepared.

Learning to Read the Orb

Three questions do most of the work:

What else is happening on the date you just selected for a meeting? What does that mean? Are there other people who might need to provide input?

Ask them every time and the rest is practice. Some of this comes with experience, but you can train yourself to think ahead. Here’s how:

  • Practice “If This, Then That” Thinking: Whenever something happens, take a moment to sit down and map out the consequences. Look into that orb! Ask yourself, “If this happens, then what?” Consider how a delay in one area impacts others, from development to QA to design. This habit will help you become more proactive rather than reactive.
  • Do it before anything breaks: Once a week, pick the two things most likely to slip and write down what happens if they do. Ten minutes, no meeting required.
  • Communicate with Your Team: Keep an open line of communication with your team members. The more you understand their workflows and challenges, the better you can predict and address potential issues before they escalate.

None of this is magic. It’s looking one step further down the chain than the person who handed you the problem.