MGT 645 Module 8 Uncertainty and Tailoring Example

When the Threshold Moves: Uncertainty, Tailoring and the Last Six Months of a Gluten-Free Line

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Aspen University

MGT 645: Project Management Essentials

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

When the Threshold Moves: Uncertainty, Tailoring and the Last Six Months of a Gluten-Free Line

Ten months into the gluten-free project, an email from the certification body changed the plan. Products certified after the next quarter must meet a tighter gluten threshold, and the line's audit was scheduled three weeks after that date. Nobody on the project had listed this in the risk register. This closing paper explains how the project handled the change and what it says about fitting project management to the project.

Uncertainty Is Wider Than Risk

Perminova et al. (2008) argued that project management had narrowed uncertainty to risk, events with probabilities and impacts that can be listed and managed in advance. They proposed that uncertainty is a broader condition: some things cannot be known when the plan is made, and managers handle them through reflection, learning and adjusting as events unfold, not only by planning responses ahead of time. On this view, a surprise is not proof that planning failed. It is part of what projects are.

Classifying the Project's Uncertainties

The first two rows are the kind of uncertainty a register handles well: they were foreseen, given owners and budgeted. The last two are different. Before month ten, no one could have assigned a probability to the certifier changing its limit, and even now no one knows whether the line can meet the new limit every day. Treating those rows as ordinary risks would invite false precision, a number in a cell that hides how little the team actually knows. The response therefore aims at learning first.

Fitting Management to the Project

Shenhar and Dvir (2007) proposed the diamond model, which places a project on four dimensions: novelty, how new the product is to its market; technology, how much new technology it uses; complexity, how many systems and parts it must coordinate; and pace, how urgent the timing is. They argued that projects in different positions need different management, and that many failures come from managing a project as if it sat somewhere else on the diamond.

At the start, the gluten-free line looked like a derivative product using known technology, a moderately complex assembly of room, equipment and procedures and normal pace. The threshold change moved two dimensions. Pace rose, because missing the date meant certifying to a standard the team had not tested. Technology also shifted, since meeting a tighter limit might require a new ingredient supplier or a changed cleaning method.

The Tailored Response

The response changed the approach in proportion to the movement. The steering group, under the decision thresholds set in Module 6, approved three changes within a day. A two-week test cycle was added to the product stream, running the current recipes and cleaning procedures against the new limit. The audit date was moved forward three weeks, inside the old rule, so the line could certify under the current standard while the team learned whether it could meet the new one before recertification. The quality manager opened a review of flour and starch suppliers as an option if testing showed the margin was thin. The total cost was $48,000, drawn from contingency with the sponsor's approval.

Options Rather Than Answers

The response was designed to keep choices open while the team learned. Moving the audit forward bought certification under the known standard. The test cycle produced evidence about the new limit without committing to a change. The supplier review created an option to switch ingredients that the company could exercise or drop once results arrived. This follows Perminova and colleagues' emphasis on reflection and learning: when the shape of the problem is not yet clear, the sensible move is to buy information and time rather than to commit early to a fix that may prove unnecessary or wrong.

What Did Not Change

Tailoring also means deciding what stays fixed. The construction stream, already near its last phase gate, kept its plan and contracts. The customer ship date stayed where it was. The decision thresholds, the dashboard and the steering group's weekly rhythm continued. Keeping these steady let the team concentrate its attention on the one area where the project had moved on the diamond, instead of reopening the whole plan.

Why the Response Fit This Company

Joslin and Müller (2015) studied project managers across many organizations and found that a project management methodology was related to success, but that the relationship depended on governance, such as whether the organization focused on shareholders or a wider set of stakeholders and how much control it exerted. For Chippewa Valley Pizza, a family company with a board that values both customers and its people, the hybrid approach and fast steering group decisions fit well. A rigid stage gate process requiring board approval for any change would have lost the three weeks.

Lessons for the Next Project

Three lessons go into the plant's project file. First, list sources of uncertainty, such as regulators and certifiers, not only specific risks, and assign someone to watch each. Second, rate the project on the diamond model at each phase gate, not only at the start. Third, keep decision rights low enough that the project can act within days. A fourth lesson concerns contingency: the money spent on the threshold response came from a reserve that the earned value forecast in Module 7 had already shown to be thin, and future plans should hold a separate management reserve for events no one can name in advance.

Conclusion

Perminova and colleagues explain why the threshold change was not a planning failure, Shenhar and Dvir's diamond model shows which parts of the approach had to change and Joslin and Müller explain why the company's governance allowed it. The line certified on schedule, and the team is still learning whether it can meet the tighter limit every day.

References

Joslin, R., & Müller, R. (2015). Relationships between a project management methodology and project success in different project governance contexts. International Journal of Project Management, 33(6), 1377-1392. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2015.03.005

Perminova, O., Gustafsson, M., & Wikström, K. (2008). Defining uncertainty in projects, a new perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 26(1), 73-79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2007.08.005

Shenhar, A. J., & Dvir, D. (2007). Reinventing project management: The diamond approach to successful growth and innovation. Harvard Business School Press.