Today's topic is…candy.  Yep, candy.  In particular chocolate candy.  The importance of chocolate in risk assessment cannot be overstated.  I've found many senior project managers who have stumbled upon this truth and I'd like to let everyone in on the secret.

 The Journey to Chocolate

The easiest way to talk about this is to tell my own personal journey to the chocolate truth.  When I was in college, my grandfather would go to the local old-fashioned candy store in his small Pennsylvania town and buy a selection of candy that he would send to me (I strongly suspect that part of his motive was to throw my grandmother off the scent of his own candy consumption).  In school I'd carry some with me and share with friends.  This continued when I started working at IBM, where eventually I put the candy in a dish on my desk to help my husband and I resist eating it at home.  To my surprise (especially since it was usually the old-fashioned hard candy) word got around and folks would stop by to chat and incidentally have some candy.  When I was a manager the candy dish would seem to make it easier for people in my group to bring up whatever was on their mind.  In all, it worked out for everyone quite well.  And then…the source dried up (I think the candy store finally closed down).  This happened near the witching season so after Halloween I brought in my leftover Halloween candy (which consisted mostly of chocolate).  Everyone seemed down with the change to chocolate so I continued.

 An Epiphany

The epiphany really came when I moved to a smaller company and into program management.  When we were in a difficult phase of a large project I found myself bringing in a new bag of candy almost every day.  I started experimenting with the whole situation and over the years have found the following to be constants:

  • The more trouble my project is in, the faster the candy disappears
  • Chocolate is most useful kind of candy for this purpose
  • Individually wrapped chocolates (like Hersheys kisses) are the best because people tend to stop by and talk while they unwrap and eat them - thus providing more information about what's not going well
  • I can discover issues in one area of the project based on the frequency of the chocolate expeditions of the folks working in that area

 

So there you have it.  Keep a dish of individually wrapped chocolates on your desk and you'll have a stress/risk monitor operating at all times.