8. What will surprise you?

This might seem like a strange thing to ask: What will surprise you?

If you knew what it was, then it probably wouldn’t surprise you.

The point of the question is to not know the answer but be always questioning, always looking for the unknown, the issues at the edge of the your understanding and visibility.

Risk in complex projects rarely comes from what you can already see. It comes from what isn’t on the radar or what you don’t yet understand – the unknowns that haven’t been surfaced or explored.

The reality is that you probably have a good sense of where the unknowns are. You need to have a system to hold those and make sure they are being worked and not missed.

Early in a project there are always unknowables. You may not know the answer yet, but you do know there is a question. For example, you might not know how many servers you’ll need, but you know that capacity is unresolved. Being clear about unanswered questions is very different from pretending there is certainty.

The issue is not eliminating uncertainty; it’s having a good way to discover it. That means setting up processes to actively surface unknowns and revisiting them as the project unfolds. It also means knowing which risks are likely to hurt first, so you can focus attention where it matters most.

Just as important is culture. Bad news needs to travel faster than good news. I often describe this as preferring lots of little explosions over one catastrophic one. Small problems exposed early provide great feedback into the ways of working and where things can go wrong. Dissent is full of information and debate should be encouraged.

So the 8th question to contemplate as a sponsor is: What will surprise you?