The following question is an important one: How do I handle the uncertainty about what is to be done? In my experience, every project is faced with this issue, and yet it is often a major problem for the novice project manager. In response to this uncertainty, many people either do nothing or immediately jump into high-speed thrashing, which creates a great deal of churn and confusion. The ideal alternative is to first acknowledge that there is always some uncertainty about every project at the outset. Once you have done this, you can then work to reduce the uncertainty about just those issues that must be decided right now.
The first step in deciding under conditions of uncertainty is to identify the number-one issue that, if not addressed, will prevent the project from moving forward. You should then ask yourself how you might resolve this uncertainty with a small, low-risk action that will reduce this uncertainty to some degree. An example of how this might work is as follows: Let’s say that you are uncertain about the due date for the project because the customer is unsure of what he or she wants. To reduce this uncertainty, you might select one small part of the final deliverable and ask the customer to tell you what would be an acceptable approximation of the desired outcome that could be achieved by next Friday.
The customer will almost certainly not tell you that this cannot be done unless everything else is nailed down first; in fact, in most cases, he or she will be able to give you a response that provides some definition of what is desired, even if some issues are still left open. This response may not be a permanent solution to the issue, but it will at least give you something you can count on for the next few days. You should then write down this approximation in simple English and bounce it back to the customer to verify that you have correctly captured his or her intent. You can then treat this approximation as a stake in the sand until further clarification emerges. This simple anchor will at least keep the project from foundering while you wait for further clarification.
One very common response to this problem of uncertainty about what is to be done is to attempt to clarify all of the uncertainties before taking any action. This approach creates the potential for analysis paralysis. If you find yourself caught in this trap, you should recognize what is happening and break the cycle by imposing a time-box, typically around twenty minutes, for information gathering, and then proceed to the smallest possible experiment that you can devise. In most cases, running even a small experiment of something that is only partially correct will teach you much more than twenty minutes of additional thought, and the results of the experiment will clarify several uncertainties at the same time.
You can develop your skill at handling uncertainty by establishing a short daily practice. The first ten minutes of every morning, you should scan the project to identify the number-one uncertainty at this instant in time. You should then block out twenty to thirty minutes of focused time to do something about this uncertainty. This could be a conversation, an observation, or a small experiment. At the end of this time block, you should write down, in one sentence, what you have learned and what new uncertainty has arisen as a result. If you establish and maintain this discipline, over time you will find that handling uncertainty becomes a normal part of your daily practice rather than something to be feared.
As you develop this discipline, I believe that, after a few weeks, you will find that most decisions do not seem as daunting as they did at the outset. This change in response is because you have developed an intuitive sense of what must be made clear now as opposed to what can be deferred until later. You will still encounter plenty of surprises on your project, but your newfound ability to rapidly reduce their significance with small experiments will allow you to keep moving the project forward and prevent the small uncertainties from growing into big problems later on.