Karima-Catherine

In projects, are you the pig or the chicken?

This post is not about Chinese astrology but about the story of a pig and a chicken chatting about doing business together ; it is usually told to illustrate the roles and degree of commitment in projects and more particularly, in the Agile SCRUM project methodology.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the chicken’s commitment in the business will be to lay eggs whereas the pig will be the bacon. In other words, the Pig is fully accountable for the outcome – he is the ham or the bacon, whereas the chicken is responsible, he is involved- he is laying the eggs.

Chickens are the people who want the product – customers, management whereas the pigs are the project team.

Crippled Pig and chicken

Whether in your private life or your professional endeavours, you will find yourself being the chicken or the pig. No pun intended. For the sake of this post, I will solely concentrate on the project management roles and commitment.

In my 8 years as a project manager, I have seen a few pigs and a lot of chickens. As stated earlier, Pigs (project team) are accountable for the results, – that means that if they do not deliver the results, they fail; success and failure lay on their hands. Whereas the chickens (stakeholders) are responsible for the outcome but if result is not delivered, they do not fail. Similar concepts are used in Law to describe duty to achieve a given result versus obligation of means, where it is only the best efforts that count.

In many organizations, the project team, more specifically the project managers are usually the pigs. They are fully accountable for the project outcome but have little, if any control over budgets, scope, time and … resources. How can you be fully accountable for a project you have not designed? It is equally hard to commit to some initiative you have not crafted; you receive the project with a budget slashed 30% by a sales rep, then strategy and creative are done by strategist and creative director who have amazing ideas but bother very little with the challenge of implementation.

Then you, as a project manager, you worry about what it will take to implement, how many resources are dedicated or available, will the concept fit the budget and furthermore, how does it integrate with the client’s set up already in place. Scope is usually a moving target as the concept agreed upon at strategy level cannot be fully materialized and therefore, rescoping and descoping are frequent.

This analogy can be criticized either way because the animal visuals are not appealing; I mean we are talking pigs and chickens here. Furthermore, people want to look committed, especially when the outcome is successful. What matters is having the right role for the right person; very few are able to roll into the dirt when things go wrong. The pig is used to it and will do it. The chicken cannot. Nice imagery, hein! The same way, a chicken can lay eggs and supervise the operations. The pig cannot. Chickens, on the other hand, should be observing the project and looking from a distance the progress. Well, the fake ones will try to dive in during project execution and try to fix what they think is not going right.

Interestingly, I have also seen a few fake pigs and chickens. For example, a chicken has been put on the pig’s team, when really he does not belong there. He looks like he is committed, looks like his ham is on the line but he really is a chicken who will tell you at the end: Oh, That is the pig’s fault.

Both doers and stakeholders are needed on a project, both are indispensible. Depending on the project, we may need more pigs or more chickens, either way, it takes an effective and efficient management to recognize those types and assign the right people to the right task.

So, are you a chicken or a pig?

Tags: Project Management, social media