Coping Better With the Project's Unknown Unknowns

Abstract

It is the goal of management to overcome and delete uncertainty. Uncertainty is seen as an obstacle and threat for successful management. However projects are full of uncertainty. Successful project management therefore aims to overcome and ideally delete uncertainty as far as possible. In project management, uncertainty and risk are often used synonymously. Current project management methodology contains only technics how to manage risk in projects. The assessment of risks is based on the precondition of stable conditions and the idea that the influencing parameters are known, assessable and calculable. Since more than 2,000 years it is the aim of the Western cultures to master the nature by natural sciences and mathematics. In the last three centuries of Modern Philosophy the perspective developed that analytical scientific know how (episteme) and technical skills (techne) can master any kind of complexity and risk. The third traditional Aristotelian competence, the practical wisdom (phronesis) however was perceived as not acknowledgeable.