For five years I was editor-in-chief of a monthly publication on R&D management called Product Development Best Practices Report. This print newsletter reached R&D professionals in Fortune 500 companies in such fields as Aerospace & Defense, Automotives, and Pharmaceuticals. The centerpiece of each issue was the company-specific case study. The case study usually involved interviews with product development managers at the Director level or higher. From these first-hand accounts, I composed an approximately 2500-word piece telling the story of how an R&D organization faced a challenge and arrived at a solution. I wrote case studies with such companies as Ford, Nortel, and Bristol-Myers Squibb dealing with issues from cross-functional integration, to product portfolio management, to technology staging, to hearing the voice of the customer.

1. EMBRACING AMBIGUITY: MDS SCIEX PILOTS ROLLING WAVE
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TO FACILITATE FAST AND FLEXIBLE
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Canada-based MDS Sciex is a developer and manufacturer of mass spectrometry
systems for chemical analysis, mainly in the Drug Discovery, Drug Development and
Proteomics markets. With approximately 400 employees and revenues in the range of
$250M (Canadian), the company is a player in a highly research-intensive and
competitive marketplace. With stringent time-to-market requirements and products
with significant technical risks, MDS Sciex sought a project management methodology
to help improve the handoff between research and the production floor. With the
Rolling Wave methodology, MDS Sciex piloted an approach that facilitates the link
between Research and Development. Rolling Wave also reduced cycle time and
fostered an agile project environment.
Until the recent pilot of the Rolling Wave approach, cost was no object on an MDS Sciex project.
In an environment where technology was king, the project schedule was treated as a result
rather than as something to manage. Project plans were developed in the front end and seldom
revisited during the course of a project. It was common for project teams to spend two or three
months planning a two-year project. The perception was that “the initial plan was the only
plan,” resulting in a self-contradictory dynamic – excessively long planning phases, coupled with
a reluctance to commit to the baseline once it was created. On highly dynamic projects, the
baseline was frequently outdated soon after conception with the result that the time-consuming
planning phase added little value to the project as executed.
Vlad Rasper, Senior Project Manager, MDS Sciex, illustrates the challenges of the legacy project
management approach with a telling anecdote: “We were finishing up a large project where we
spent three months pouring over the plan. It was about a two-year project. The project
manager insisted on having about 3,000 tasks entered into the project management tool…tasks
that he, himself, was going to oversee. About three months into the project they encountered a
major technical difficulty and the plan went down the drain. They spent months coming up with
a ‘perfect’ plan, which was quickly obsoleted by reality.”
According to Rasper, MDS Sciex faced a number of specific challenges rooted in the company’s
approach to project management. Among these, he identifies a growing displeasure at the
customer and sponsor level regarding the disparity between the project-as-planned and what
was actually offered at the completion of the project. In addition, the variance between the
static plan and the reality made resource allocation difficult.
Rolling Wave and the Problem of Brittle Schedules
To meet these challenges, Rasper advocated a new project management technique called Rolling
Wave. According to Rasper, Rolling Wave is a tool premised on the unpredictability of future
Copyright Management Roundtable, Inc. 2003-2006. All Rights Reserved.

2. Embracing Ambiguity: MDS Sciex Pilots Rolling Wave Project Management
events. “The further out in time we go,” Rasper states, “the more uncertain the future is, and
the harder it is to make accurate estimates. There is diminishing value in trying to predict a
high level of detail over the entire project timeline. The Rolling Wave approach is to create a
window of highly detailed and accurate plans for near term activity. This window represents a
very short term set of activities – those that that will happen tomorrow, or next week, or next
month. We should be able to estimate these activities with a higher degree of accuracy.
Activities in the more distant future are given rough order-of-magnitude estimates, but are not
planned or scheduled in detail.”
According to new product development consultant Greg Githens of Catalyst Management
Consulting, “Rolling Wave is a more flexible approach – a more real world approach and will thus
yield a robust schedule. The important thing, however, is that people need to learn to tolerate
ambiguity.” According to Githens, ambiguity is inherent in product development projects. There
is more that developers don’t know than they do know. “Rolling Wave represents a change of
mindset that emphasizes discovery and learning,” declares Githens, “rather than one that
marshals all of the facts and then manages the details. Rolling Wave front-loads problem
solving…it doesn’t focus on solving the easy problems, but focuses on solving the important
problems.”
Rolling Wave is a solution to the problem of what Githens calls “brittle schedules.” Says Githens,
“Brittle is the opposite of flexible. Ask yourself, ‘how many schedules do we publish and commit
to that lose all validity and become something of a joke to the development team?’ My
observation is that this happens more often than not.”
According to Githens, brittle schedules are the result of the unquestioned assumptions project
teams make when they create the schedule by picking an end date and working backwards. An
alternative approach is to “plan a little, do a little.” “Rolling Wave, says Githens, “is an iterative
approach to project planning that says ‘we’re not going to try to fool ourselves and fool
everybody else by thinking that we can create the perfect, accurate, totally correct project plan,
publish that project plan and expect everybody to believe that that is a truthful representation of
the way the project is going to roll-out.’”
Catching A Wave: The Basics of the Rolling Wave Methodology
The key to the Rolling Wave methodology is to segregate near term from far term activities. For
MDS, near term is defined as a three-month window. Work to be performed within this window
is defined in as much detail as necessary. There is no attempt made to try to estimate in detail
those activities that fall outside of this near term window. Activities in the distant future are
represented by Rough Order-of-Magnitude (ROM) estimates or summaries. The scheduling of
these future activities can be estimated in sequential groups called “ROM Group A,” “ROM Group
B,” etc. [See figure below.]
2

3. Embracing Ambiguity: MDS Sciex Pilots Rolling Wave Project Management
As near term work is completed, what was once “ROM Group A” moves into the near term focus
and becomes the next “wave” subject to detailed work breakdowns and schedule estimates.
These successive waves
of planning a little and
then doing a little roll
through the entire project
life cycle. One key to the
process, says Githens, is
that, “The windows
overlap, so that we’re
always looking a little
further ahead. You want
to look ahead while
you’re still in your
comfort zone. You
identify a small amount
of work, and then, as you
progressively complete
each of the planned
tasks, it’s time for
another round of
planning.”
Githens offers the following useful tips on estimating near term work, based on the basic Project
Management toolkit:
o Estimates of work can be based on expert judgment, analogous experience, and documented
standards.
o Estimates of work are predictions, not fact. Since one can’t predict the future accurately,
estimates will inherently contain error. The project needs to know if they have a little bit of
error or a lot of error in their estimate.
o Top-down ROM estimates are quick, but may have high levels of uncertainty. Detailed
bottom-up estimates are time consuming, but can be very accurate.
Rasper emphasizes that accepting that estimates contain error can conflict with cultural norms:
“In our culture ‘error’ was a bad word, so there was some selling to get people to accept error.
Error is not a bad thing – it’s a part of working. Since there is no such thing as a perfect or
correct estimate, what you need to be able to say is that there is ‘a little error’ or ‘a lot of error.’
It’s our job as estimators to judge the amount of error.”
Githens points out that even in the context of Rolling Wave, “If you know there are tasks in the
future that can be estimated – then do it.” But Githens points out that if it were possible to plan
100 percent of the work in a project, then that project is a deployment project and not a
3

4. Embracing Ambiguity: MDS Sciex Pilots Rolling Wave Project Management
development project. By definition a development project cannot be planned with
100 percent accuracy.
Since planning can never be completely accurate, Githens emphasizes that the Rolling Wave
approach embraces, rather than avoids, ambiguity. He observes: “There are three
characteristics of a stagnant organization: ambiguity avoidance, inertia, and
compartmentalization. To the extent that you’re still doing the same things you’re doing, over
and over – that’s inertia. If you need to wait until you have perfect information – that’s avoiding
ambiguity. If you hear, ‘it’s not my job, someone else does that’ – that’s compartmentalization.
To do any kind of development work we need to have some tolerance for ambiguity. A
development project involves discovery…it involves admitting that estimates have error and that
we don’t know for sure what we’re going to find out until we get there. Stagnant organizations
are not very innovative nor do they learn well at the project level. They try to launch projects
with brute force or high control methods, that ultimately lead to slow, rigid, brittle projects.”
Piloting the Rolling Wave Approach
The first step for MDS Sciex was to choose a suitable pilot project for the Rolling Wave
methodology. They chose a project code named “Borg” that would involve the implementation
of a new, proprietary
technology. Says
Rasper, “Since it’s a
very dynamic project,
we decided that it was
good material for a
pilot.”
The Borg team chose to
define a three-month
Rolling Wave window for
planning near term
work. Explains Rasper,
“The reason we use
three months is because
the information we get
out of that window we
feed back to functional
managers whose responsibility it is to give us the resources we need, and two months does not
give them enough heads up. We feel that three months allows us to be pretty comfortable with
the accuracy of the estimate.”
Within that three-month window, the project aimed for plus or minus ten percent accuracy in its
estimates. Activities beyond the three-month window were given estimates that were in a range
4

5. Embracing Ambiguity: MDS Sciex Pilots Rolling Wave Project Management
of plus or minus 30 percent. The project core team meets monthly to map out activities and
update the planning within the continually rolling three-month wave. Cost and schedule
variance are managed by exception. Explains Rasper, “We don’t generate a lot of data. We
agree with our Senior Management on a [predetermined, acceptable level of] variance” from the
plan. Continues Rasper, “For example, the baseline burn rate might be X number of dollars. On
a dynamic project like this, we’ll set up a variance of, say, 20 percent, and if we’re over that 20
percent – or even under 20 percent – we’ll explain to senior management why this has
happened. Otherwise, they don’t expect to hear from us.”
Initially, the pilot methodology encountered some resistance. Some key stakeholders were
reluctant to accept initial project plans that had low degrees of accuracy in estimating the back
end. Rasper notes that Senior Managers liked to see very accurate back ends, with specific
completion dates. “The question was ‘when will you finish?’” says Rasper, “and it took a little bit
of selling to Senior Managers to say ‘It [the completion date] is too far away [for us to estimate
it accurately]. Give us a window. I’ll try to drive the truck through that tunnel but don’t expect
me to stop on a dime.”
There was also some resistance from the project team members who perceived the new
initiative as an increase in the amount of planning. Team members wanted to get the planning
out of the way at the front end of project. There was resistance to doing less planning in more
iterations. Rasper claims that this resistance faded over time – especially after seeing episodes
on other projects where months of planning became irrelevant after only a small portion of the
work had been done.
Results and Benefits of Rolling Wave
Rasper reports a number of concrete results and benefits associated with the Rolling Wave pilot
project both expected and unexpected. “The project has been a success by any standard,”
concludes Rasper. “We did the initial plan in a week. And then the subsequent planning
sessions take one day per month. The project team came to embrace the ‘plan a little, work a
little’ cycle – and it definitely worked. We cut two or three months out of our cycle time.”
Since the rolling wave approach allows greater degrees of accuracy than a one shot estimate,
the team has a more realistic view of near term resource requirements and can better manage
their allocation. Says Rasper, “Instead of guessing what’s going to happen six or eight months
from now and putting your dibs on this or that resource, without, perhaps, ever using that
resource, our functional managers have more faith in the short term forecasts, so they are more
willing to commit resources to the project.” The Rolling Wave approach also allows Senior
Management and sponsors to have more realistic project cost and schedule estimates at
completion.
An unanticipated benefit of the new methodology is that it has improved the sense of ownership
and accountability among team members. Says Rasper, “They now come to the project feeling
5

6. Embracing Ambiguity: MDS Sciex Pilots Rolling Wave Project Management
that they didn’t just put together some plan that got filed on the top shelf never to be seen
again. By asking them to participate in the planning of their future work on a periodic basis,
they say that they feel more in tune with the development of the product.” Taken together,
these results were deemed sufficient to warrant deploying the Rolling Wave methodology on the
next project in sequence.
Taking a broader view, Rasper summarizes some of the general benefits of the Rolling Wave
methodology:
o It gets the team out of the blocks and starts them working, because the best way to know
what’s coming is to actually face it.
o It shortens the duration of front end planning, and transitions projects into the design
phase sooner.
o It promotes an open-mined and flexible project environment.
o It allows the team to combine the advantages of both top-down and bottom up estimating.
Concludes Githens, “Rolling Wave gives you the ability to have a modicum of control and of
predictability in your project plans without this fantasy that everything can be known and
predicted. We need to open people up to the idea that it’s acceptable to say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I
MRT
can find out’ or ‘the data may be unclear.’ It helps us to tolerate ambiguity.”
6