coneblog

Regular readers know that the Scope Axe is one of my favorite Project Management tools. The Scope Axe is that tool that the PM uses to perform a radical scope reduction on a project. That is in danger of failure.

Based on our current predicament in Iraq, lets examine how a hypothetical Kerry Administration might swing the scope axe on the Iraqi Project.

The goal of swinging the scope axe is to reduce the scope in a project that is missing its dates and budgets. It is the opposite of sending in more troops – it is reducing the mission to fit the troop and resource constraints. As in IT projects, more troops in Iraq might not make a substantive difference. The new troops have a big logistical tail, need security, and need bases. How many rear-area soldiers are needed to keep one Marine on patrol?

So what might be the options for Kerry Planners in the New Year? We can look at some of the same dimensions that we looked at in Chunking. Can we reduce the geography? Can we reduce the expectations? Can we reduce the mission?

As to geography, we have done some of that already. The British and allies are responsible for the South, around Basra – a completely Shiite area. We are holding the north, the Kurdish area, with relatively few troops. It is the central area, the so called Sunni Triangle, where most of the trouble is.

It is interesting that, at least for the short-term, our Military has reduced scope. We have largely abandoned the area around Faluja, and a few other towns. We fought pitched battles in Falluja in the spring, but abandoned the area to the insurgents. Could we abandon other areas, if for a while? To do that, we would want to be able to seal these outlaw areas off from the rest of the country, something that we haven’t been able to do with Falujja.

As to mission, It is hard to see what we could leave out. Security, Infrastructure, Oil Production, and Democracy are the big missions. Our initial approach to security, using Contractors to train new Iraqi security forces, has been a signal failure. The result is that we had to basically start over again this summer after the newly-trained units failed to fight.

Our approach to infrastructure is big projects by big American contractors. Good for business in the US, but doesn’t provide employment for the hundreds of thousands of jobless Iraqis. We would probably be better off taking five of those Billions, converting it to fifty million hundred-dollar gold pieces, scattering them across the desert, and handing out shovels. Many would then be motivated, with something productive to do. Until you run numbers like the above, you lose the scale of what we are spending in Iraq.

As for Bush, the aggressive attacks from Kerry have pushed him back to a firm stand on the status quo in Iraq. As the situation continues to deteriorate, that leaves him little ground to stand on. I can remember several projects where the PM became entrenched in the original scope because he was under strong pressure from factions who opposed the project from the beginning. In one case, the PM was removed. In the other, he went down with the project.

If Bush is still in power in January and the election pressure is off, then maybe he will be able to pick up his Scope axe.