The fog of war.
That’s what military leaders call battlefield uncertainty during the fighting. The term is ascribed to the Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote, "The great uncertainty of all data in 
war is a peculiar difficultly, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently—like the effect of a fog or moonshine—gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance."
Although von Clausewitz wasn’t describing the decision making challenges of managing projects, he could have been. Regardless of your work management approach, everyone doing project based work will at times face the need to make decisions without all the needed information. I wish I could tell you that project management software had all the answers, but unfortunately it doesn’t. Most of the time it’s up to project managers to make the hard decisions.
I thought it might be interesting to talk about how the U.S. Marines are trained to m
ake decisions in the fog of war. They call it the 70% solution:
- If you have 70% of the information you’d like to have
- If you’ve done 70% of the analysis that you think is required
- And feel 70% confident that you are right, then get on with it
The Marine Corp teaches their young officers that a well-reasoned decision, that’s well executed, has a fair chance of success, but no action has no chance of success.
The next time you need to make a tough decision in the heat of battle, give some thought to the 70% solution. If it’s good enough for the U.S. Marines, it might work for you.
