Systems Thinking, Project Management, and Agile - Part 6: "Abandon All Hope,..."

[For this series, it will help to have read "System Dynamics and Causal Loop Diagrams 101."]

"...ye who enter here." So reads the inscription to the Gates of Hell in Dante Alighieri's epic poem, "Divine Comedy." Who among us hasn't felt on occasion that stepping across the threshold to our place of employment is like passing through the gates of Dante's Inferno? But as the poets have told us, the way to peace is to find the path through our troubles. In this article, we'll look into just how deeply project system dynamics can adversely affect progress and even whether or not the project is successful.

But I do want to arm the reader with a couple of rays of hope. The concluding article in this series will focus on how this system model¹ can be used to good effect, how it can be used to identify problems before they grow out of control. Therein lies the path to peace. Before we get there, we need to understand several more influential feedback loops.