Project Management Lessons From My Backyard
People assume that because I spend my days managing digital transformation programs, my weekends are an escape from all that. As an avid gardener, my weekends tend to be another series of projects. And the best project management lessons I've learned this year came from my garden.
My garden has taught me more about running a good project than most debriefs because it doesn't let me get away with anything. A garden will shows you, honestly and on its own schedule, whether your plan was truly sound.
This past season handed me three separate lessons, and each one maps surprisingly cleanly onto the digital transformation job.
Effort doesn't fix a missed requirement
This Spring, my blueberries wouldn't flower even though I fertilized on schedule, watered consistently, did everything the calendar told me to do. My plan was sound, but I had clearly missed something. After some research to get to the root of the issue, I discovered blueberries need acidic soil, and after testing I found mine wasn't close. Unfortunately, my planning and consistent care would never have gave them a better chance. Once I worked bark mulch into the soil last fall to bring the pH down, I got a bumper crop this year!
I’ve seen the same failure on transformation projects. A team executes the plan well and still delivers something the business can’t use because a requirement was missed or misunderstood at the outset. Consistent effort can’t make up for a wrong diagnosis. In account management, that means researching the client’s market and understanding their brand before making recommendations, the same way I should have tested the soil before I fertilized.
Escalating fixes are a sign the plan needs to change
My raised beds were next to the chicken run, and last spring the chickens found them. They got in and destroyed most of what I had planted. I put chicken wire around the beds, and they got past it. Clipping their wings to limit how high they could fly didn’t stop them either. When I added bird netting over the top, they found another way in.
Eventually I stopped adding fixes and fenced the chickens out of the entire garden. That cost far more than any of the patches. I installed a new perimeter fence and moved every raised bed with its soil and plants, and I’m still rebuilding the drip irrigation system the move disrupted. It was the right decision, but it was neither cheap nor fast.
I try to prepare clients for this early in an engagement. Some risks can’t be solved with a workaround, and a series of escalating small fixes usually means the underlying plan is wrong. Knowing when to stop patching and restructure the plan is a skill, even when the change adds time and cost. Waiting makes the change more expensive. I lost most of a season’s plantings before I committed to the fence.
Routine maintenance can be the biggest cost on the project
My backyard peach tree gets leaf curl almost every year, a fungal disease that spreads in Oregon’s wet spring weather. I’ve pruned it to improve airflow and moved it next to a wall that reflects extra heat and light. This year I covered it to keep rain off the new growth, and it produced a good harvest. That harvest took several seasons of work, and I don’t expect next year to be any easier.
This tree, in this spot, needs far more care than my other fruit trees. I can keep it producing, but every hour I spend on it is an hour I don’t spend on the rest of the garden.
Technical debt works the same way, and it’s easy to miss because the work looks like routine maintenance. Most teams have a legacy system or manual workaround that still functions but needs someone to tend it every sprint. Over a year or two, that recurring cost is often higher than the cost of replacing the system.
The more I garden, the more it looks like my job
Managing a garden has more in common with managing a digital transformation program than I expected, and the longer I do both, the more overlap I find. A business grows and changes the way a garden does. Its customers, staff, and tools shift from one season to the next, and a project plan has to change with them. Neither one responds to a plan that ignores the conditions on the ground. The three lessons from this year apply at work as much as at home: test the soil before you fertilize, change the plan when the fixes keep escalating, and count what high-maintenance systems cost you every season.