Bridges, and Boats, and Balloons! Oh my!
Bridges, Boats, and Balloons - a typology of projects.
Big picture time. Projects exists because of the intent to create a solution to a problem, or to create an opportunity (new market access or new customers). All projects are very much same in the doing, but the planning depends on a clear description of the situation and the objectives. This is where most leadership falls flat. Without good descriptions and intent, planning is an exercise in software and hand-waving and trade-off analysis and too many meetings without enough investigation of the intent and the means.
Projects fall into one of three broad categories, and each requires different thinking and research before planning. Trying to use software development 'fail fast and often' methods is not a good idea for the builders of skyscrapers, but that is a problem of method, and here I am looking at the larger problem of unclear thinking.
Better metaphors can help with better thinking, so let's consider that a project should be understood to be a Bridge, or a Boat, or a Balloon while it is being conceived and communicated. Let me explain, briefly.
Think about building a bridge. Your goal is to connect two locations so that unencumbered and rapid transportation is enabled. To do so, you must accomplish a few key tasks:
1. Identify and take control of the landing sites at each end of the bridge
2. Determine the best engineering solutions to span the space between the landings
3. Solve the construction challenges to erect that bridge across that space without impinging on the rights of those with other uses of the intervening space
By definition, to build a bridge there are a few engineering challenges, many legal and rights questions to resolve, economics of course, and then when it is built it is obvious and easy this it will reliably connect the two defined places at the ends.
But what if you need to connect from some point to one of several other points while retaining the ability to flexibily adjust the destinations one at a time. You are building a boat. And key to that, you need to do a few critical tasks:
1. Determine the logistical and practical requirements to dock at all of the desired destinations
2. Identify and confirm the load and speed requirements for your objectives
3. Design and create a ship that enables the flexibility of 1 but the constraints of 2
Which is very different. Your big challenge is not controlling both ends of the voyage and the means of connection, but to understand the many options and optimize your economics while retaining flexibility. Once a bridge is built, it is built, and only maintenance and toll collection is required; after all, it isn't going anywhere. A boat, however, has to have motors and navigation and crew and adapt to ever changing priorities and the vagaries of tides and weather.
But still, in both of those cases, there are defined destinations! A hot air balloon, not so much. It's a condition or an event or an experience or maybe, even, a spectacle. Critical in the development of a good ballon are questions like:
1. How many people and how much cargo do we want to take, and how far?
2. How much control of the flight duration and destination is necessary?
3. What are the aerodynamic and thermodynamic requires to satisfy the objectives?
Wow kapow! We have a bit of a spectrum here. Bridges are a means always. There are boats for pleasure, and for freight, and a host of other tasks which are by definition more flexible, and to perform their functional purpose they must be propelled as opposed to conveying things that propel themselves. And that balloon? Now we have something that is sort of a boat but without specific port requirements and usually very limited ability to move big loads or lots of people, and probably arriving at unplanned destinations or on an unpredictable schedule.
So what? It's always important to ask so what.
Let's considering Hollywood movies, is the MCU a bridge, a boat, or a balloon? What about Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" (insert your favorite art movie here)?
Disney loves to build bridges. The MCU repurposes existing (and often ancient) IP to stepwise expand a franchise. Each movie connects from a place they control to another place they control while providing the audience with a well defined and expected experience. Trust me, this is because Disney executives know exactly what they are doing to monitize a deep well of IP. How many bridges they can build with that IP to make money is a question of their talent, skill, and the audience's changing tastes and preferences.
Meanwhile, a movie like Brazil (1985 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/brazil_(1985_film)), which was eventually released in the USA by Universal Studios after some very contentious arguments with the director, who insisted that they use the international release version (20th Century Fox). This absurdist film wasn't an IP expansion monetization, it was a creative vision released into the air and found good by many audiences. You know it was a balloon movie because there was no "Brazil 2" followup (I hope this remains true). This also applies to many of the early Pixar movies, and anything Monty Python ("budget? we have enough money to have a budget?").
Disney plans years of MCU movies in advance, and budgets accordingly. Artsy films like "Brazil" tend to almost always be driven by an individual creator and then funded or supported along the way by different agents. Notice what has happened to Pixar movies in the years since Disney took over - bridge mentality teams can't build balloons. Anything that is #2 or up in a franchise is a bridge. Almost all new cars are a bridge, as are almost all new drugs or golf courses. And thankfully so, you don't want to rent a car and then have to take a week of driving lessons - predictability is very almost always a virtue.
BUT: Many of the creative and practical items we love the most are, or at least started as, balloons. Others were boats, like the iPhone. It takes a lot of courage to build a boat, and more to build a balloon. We rely on trusty bridges to get from A to B, but only a boat gets you from A directly to E and you will need a balloon to go places you don't yet know you need to go or even know the details about. NASA is a balloon building organization.
If you are running R&D, or a project, you better know if you are planning a bridge or a balloon - or a boat. And I hope this easy to remember B vs B vs B analogy helps :-)