You are Not Pac-Man

This post is part of the Pac-Man Risk Management series.
1. Introduction :: 2. You are Not Pac-Man :: 3. Paranormal Psychology

No, you are not Pac-Man in this analogy. You are most likely a project or program manager (or aspiring to be one) in the real world, and here you are no different (with the exception that it doesn't really matter how often you win or lose). Pac-Man represents a team member. Albeit in this case, a team member that is a mindless drone who goes and does precisely as you direct. This could be good or bad depending on how troublesome team members are for you. But, if the ghost gets him, then it is clearly your fault. Takes 10 minutes to clear a board? Your fault. Goes for the fruit, gets killed along the way? Yep - your fault.

All of the decisions are made by you, the project manager. And Pac-Man does as he is told, no questions asked. He goes about the business of eating the dots according to your plan. In the real world, obviously, we don't have precisely this situation. People factors come into play. But for us to see concepts, this helps because we can isolate the impact of people factors. More on people factors in a bit, but generally this mimics pretty close to the way it works on a project.

The purpose of the game is to clear each maze of dots while capturing bonus opportunities when they present themselves (or when you strategically create bonus opportunities). All the while avoiding those pesky ghosts, Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde. This parallels our project environment nicely, doesn't it? In case you missed it, the ghosts are the risks. Now, we'll dig into the maze and the ghosts in a later post, so let's first appreciate the purpose in the first place and our hero, Pac-Man.

Our function as controllers of Pac-Man is guide him through the maze, consuming the dots as efficiently as possible, until the maze is clear. Ever stop to think about why you hurry through the maze? There's no time limit, other than one you impose. Perhaps it is because you raced your friends when you were a kid or something like that? Actually, it is a natural stress response - I'm sure there is some psychology of it somewhere, but I'm not going to look it up. Think about it: the longer you spend in the maze, the more likely you are to be trapped by the ghosts. If you've run out of the "super" dots, those 4 magical, super-sized dots (the forerunner of "super-sized" concepts at fast-food joints, I guess), then you can only run from the little fellas.

And they will eventually trap you no matter how good you are. I remember when I was a kid going to the arcade some of the "big kids" there seemed to know a pattern to beat the game. In other words, there was a certain path, a combinations of moves, through the maze that would allow Pac-Man to consume the dots without encountering a ghost. I'm not sure if it was the most efficient path, the fastest path, or what, but it seemed to work. Trouble was, that if one of those kids zigged when he should have zagged, he would be toast just like anybody else. He was experienced and it made a difference. He cleared more boards and scored more points than anybody else so even though you always eventually lose the game (you have to stop sometime), he won in the eyes of others and according to the leading scores listing.

Was he necessarily the best project manager of Pac-Man? Not necessarily. But there is something in the way he played that taught us all an important lesson. Though we didn't think of it this way at the time - who would? - he had found a way to completely minimize his risk within the game. His only risk was external to the game itself - his error in guiding Pac-Man, his need to go to the bathroom and no way to pause the game, his mother arriving to pick him up and take him home. He had discovered the "happy path" for completing his project and that separated him from the pack.

Now, not everyone could do this. For most players, each time you dropped in a quarter, it was a new game. The goals and objectives were the same, but it was a new chance, a slate clean, same number of lives to lose, and with zero points. Also, the same risks presented themselves. They will manifest themselves differently depending on what you do, but they are generally there. And this tells us some basic concepts of risk management.

1. It is a project, with a definite beginning and ending. The music will start and the "wanka-wanka-wanka" will start when you start gobbling dots. The ghosts will come out of the center and begin the chase, and will chase you until you clear the board. The project will start and it won't end until you win or you are dead.

2. The risks exist and we can know what they are. But, we don't necessarily know how they will behave. We know what they are trying to do, but we can only anticipate their moves based on their general proximity. And, the proximity matters. How close they are to you makes you more nervous.

3. We know we have some risk mitigation devices and they are finite. You've only really got 4 super dots that turn the tables on the ghosts. We have to chose to use the strategically (pausing beside the dot and waiting for one or many of the ghosts to come near) or tactically (being chased and just getting the dot at the last minute). The difference is proactive behavior versus reactive behavior.

4. While we have very little control over the risks themselves, we have total control over how we will handle it. We decide. We send the team member a certain direction. As we stress we make shakier decisions and we start to have additional issues. Rarely, when you get in a jam do you get out of it without some impact to your nerves, confidence, and focus.

5. We are responsible for the team member. Pac-Man does what he is told and that is the limit of it. In our practice of risk management, we know we have human element that we can count on (or worry about, depending on the person), but ultimately, regardless of the human factors, we are responsible. And we should act accordingly.

To close this post, I'll qualify all of it with the fact that while these look "absolute" there are very few absolutes in risk management - and most of those are debatable. We'll see more of those as we go, but for now give some thought to our hero Pac-Man and what we put him through. I wish I could find a statistic that estimated the number of times Pac-Man has died - I'm betting in the trillions, but he always seems to come back. And, the ghosts too.