Hell Hath No Fury…

Say hello to the ultimate project team, tasked with saving the earth: Marvel’s Avengers!

Indeed, the Avengers adhere to many of the principles espoused by expert project managers. Take this guidance from Rob Blakemore, programme manager at the Home Office: “Once the team is formed, the project manager should move away from initial ‘command and control’. As soon as possible, the team should be empowered to plan and find the best means of making progress quickly.”

In the Marvel universe, Nick Fury, the leader of shadowy government agency SHIELD, nails this, playing cameo roles in recruiting his superhero charges and then letting them plan their own course.

PMs Assemble!

In the first Avengers movie, Thor’s brother Loki steals the Tesseract and uses it in league with the Chitauri to launch an invasion of earth. Acting on those strong project team principles, Fury assembles the Avengers and combines their different skills to mount a defence against the alien horde.

Interestingly, the project is most severely jeopardised when it transpires that the sponsor – SHIELD – might have its own uses in mind for the Tesseract, causing a brief division in the team. It’s a great example of the value of transparency in project outcomes, especially when the Hulk goes on a rampage and takes out valuable project assets before rejoining the fold.

Is this project a success? Ultimately, yes. The Chitauri invasion is thwarted, Loki imprisoned and the Avengers united. But what’s the cost? New York is ravaged – and its citizens’ displeasure is a plot point in many of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. Lesson: don’t keep your project team in the dark. And advise your sponsors that taking big risks to hit the key project outcomes comes with major downsides.

The computer doesn’t always know best

The MCU rumbles on with solo outings that include Fury having to deal with enemy infiltrators in his sponsor organisation undermining his projects (Captain America: Winter Soldier) before faking his own death just to get out from under all the hassle this project is causing him.

But the project team still comes together when needed. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, everyone’s there right at the outset, backing each other up and deploying complementary skills to hit the stage gate of disrupting Hydra’s latest experiments on tools powered by the Infinity Stones.

But you know what’s almost as bad as opaque sponsor agendas? A project team member thinking they know best. So when Tony Stark seduces Bruce Banner with his idea for an earth defence system based around his unstoppable death suits and powered by a completely alien artificial intelligence (AI), you just know it’s not going to end well.

The problem is obvious: he has elevated himself to head of the project management office, but doesn’t have all the intelligence. He’s also too trusting of the shiny new software. It’s no surprise that things take a turn for the worse until proper project manager Fury comes back on the scene. Ultron – the aforementioned AI – is foiled in its plot to crash a Balkan city into the earth. Lesson? AI isn’t just here to take your job – it has got some ideas of its own too.

To infinity and beyond!

Actually, that’s not quite right. Avengers: Infinity War is the real study in what can happen when a project team lacks guidance. The mission is still fairly clear – stop granite-bearded bad guy Thanos from getting all six Infinity Stones. But the Avengers adopt a kind of bastardised agile methodology here, and it doesn’t go well.

For a start, they split up a little too quickly. There’s nothing wrong with breaking a project down into workflows, but the team has been denuded from other fights and doesn’t seem to twig that everyone needs to agree on keeping the stones out of Thanos’s grasp.

So we get Peter ‘Star-Lord’ Quill botching the plan to kill Thanos after he learns of his girlfriend’s death at his hands (no project was ever well served by even the most justifiable outburst of emotion). Doctor Strange hands over a component that could destroy half of all life in the universe to save Tony Stark, and Scarlet Witch refuses to blitz the mind stone, only to relent at exactly the wrong moment, giving Thanos a chance to get the last stone.

Result? A snap of the fingers and half the world crumbles to dust. And if that isn’t a metaphor for the shoddy application of agile methodologies, we’re not sure what is. The project teams have been working really hard, but they lack any kind of structure, lose sight of the overarching objective and have no idea what dependencies they’re creating.

The Avengers, then: an object lesson in the value of coordination by a decent project manager.

The Avengers’ diversity problem

If you’ve seen Captain America: Civil War, you’ll know that the Avengers team is not exactly sweetness and harmony all of the time. But while it can avoid outright groupthink, having a group of mostly extrovert, mostly white men on a project can be pretty dangerous.

Nick Fury is a bit stuck on this score. It’d be great to recruit more women to the project. But if your recruitment policy is ‘must have superpowers’, your talent pool is going to be pretty limited. There’s Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel, which is great. Fury then brings in Black Widow, who doesn’t have any powers per se (beyond kick-ass hand-to-hand fighting skills), and inherits Gamora from the Guardians of the Galaxy.

With Black Panther, War Machine and Falcon, there is at least some ethnic diversity in the team. But it’s worth remembering that the Avengers often fail when they become too single-minded about a challenge.

Project Avengers: which team member are you?

Tony Stark

Pros Technically gifted, single-minded and strategic.

Cons Egotistical, blunt, overreaching and lacks trust.

Ah, Iron Man. Is there a superhero you’d less like to spend time with? A playboy, engineering genius and fast-talking huckster armed with petty put-downs, he’s the guy on the team who won’t take orders, but if the project scope is tight, he’ll deliver inventive solutions.

Most like that one person on the dev team who actually knows about blockchain but refuses to explain it, and who won’t stop ‘fixing’ project issues with code that only he understands.

 

Thor

Pros Strong, mission-oriented, loyal and honest.

Cons Not bright, hedonistic, proud and overconfident. The phrase ‘When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’ could have been written for Thor. Take away his holy hammer, and the guy’s just a buff surfer dude with an inflated ego.

Most like the project team member you always send to stakeholder review meetings. If things aren’t going to plan, they’ll be dazzled by his pecs (or his polished PowerPoint).

 

Black Widow

Pros Disciplined, compassionate, level-headed and highly skilled.

Cons No superpower and a weak spot for big green guys.

Natasha Romanov entered the Black Widow Ops programme that trained her to incredible skill levels in combat and espionage. Nick Fury’s project is not blessed with female team members, and he is definitely getting a letter from SHIELD’s HR department without her…

Most like that PM who can’t code themselves but has an uncanny knack for ensuring the tech team delivers quality material in their dev sprints.

 

The Hulk

Pros Massive power, intense focus and analytical (as Bruce Banner).

Cons Unquenchable rage and poor communication skills. Bruce Banner’s alter ego is an incredibly important part of the team. When Tony Stark’s tech and the golden-boy heroics of Thor and Captain America fail to deliver, they can count on good old-fashioned brute strength from the Hulk to save the day.

Most like the person you send out on site visits where burly contractors are responsible for you hitting milestones. Yes, you can use a bit of carrot – but it’s good to have some stick too.

 

Captain America

Pros Moral, upstanding and self-sacrificing.

Cons A little dull and self-righteous, with a by-the-book attitude. Steve Rogers would never mess up a Gantt chart, would he? But the last thing you want is someone parroting company dress codes at you when you’re trying to hit a deadline.

Most like the guy on the team who’s really meticulous about filling in risk assessments and documenting activities. Everyone respects him, but not (as he thinks) because he’s kick-ass, but because he’s good cover for their mistakes.