IV. Tactical Dispositions
1. Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
2. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.
3. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.

This section brings to mind the common phrase, “low hanging fruit,” which is often used in business and political circles to refer to easy targets for adding new business or reforming policies. What is often missing from those discussions, however, is the question, “How high are we capable of reaching?”

When cutting the budgets of time, resources and money for a project, the goal can quickly get out of reach. As the time allowance shrinks, you leave less room for planning which can cause a higher margin of error — thus requiring more time to fix. As resources shrink, either more time will be needed or more resources will need to be brought in near the end — most likely at greater cost. As funding is removed, the ability to respond to unforeseen issues (hardware failures, natural disasters, personnel issues, etc.) is greatly diminished and will result in the need for emergency funding.

Keep in mind, too, that the height of the low hanging fruit is relative to your own capabilities and the capabilities of your competition. Do not take on a project which, once initiated, could easily be taken over by a more capable competitor. At the same time, be on the look out for smaller competitors who have taken on more than they can handle.

The fruit which hang low today may be out of reach tomorrow. Be prepared to reach as high as you can, but hold back the temptation to reach too high — even if the project is just within your range.

Sun Tzu wrote:

III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM
18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy
and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will
succumb in every battle.

We assume that we possess an accurate understanding of our own skills and capabilities. Many people, however, tend to overestimate their own performance, skills or capabilities. When they do, they make a fatal mistake which guarantees they will never see success.

Take some time out of your busy schedule to assess and re-assess your own skills and capabilities. An excellent way to do this is to review and update your current resume at least once a year. That will represent your view (however accurate) of yourself. Once you’ve updated this document, make sure to seek honest feedback from your colleagues. Hand them a red pen and request they be as brutally honest as they dare. Promise to take their feedback seriously and without retribution. Their honesty (should they wield it) will certainly be difficult to swallow and could possibly shatter your self esteem, but you will be better off for the experience.

Next, be sure to obtain as much information about potential projects and teams with which you work. If your skills do not benefit the team or will not advance the project, you should bow out. You will have only a 50/50 chance of success and may end up damaging your standing with others. Beware that some people may misrepresent the scope or requirements of a project. Be sure you always set up an exit path to avoid those sorts of situations.

With a solid grasp of your own capabilities and enough research prior to taking on any project, you will succeed far more times than you fail.

Sun Tzu wrote:

II. WAGING WAR
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited
from prolonged warfare.

Avoid becoming involved in open-ended projects. Always insist on clear conditions or goals that indicate the project is considered completed. Make sure that deadlines and milestones are realistic and attainable.

No one wants to be involved in a project that is languishing. When deadlines pass and milestones are never reached, those involved in the project become demoralized. This is similar to laying siege. In Sun Tzu’s words from this chapter:

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.

So, too will your team lose their enthusiasm and have their creativity become dulled when a project turns in to a siege. One way to combat this is to break a larger project into a series of campaigns with clear objectives which advance the overall goal. Be sure to celebrate the small victories along the way to assure morale stays high.

If you find yourself pulled in to an endlessly mired project, there is only one thing to do. Retreat! There is no advantage to be gained by soldiering on if the end conditions are not clear. Retreat, re-group, re-evaluate and create a new plan which contains clear, achievable conditions for victory.

Sun Tzu wrote:

I. LAYING PLANS
26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many
calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.
The general who loses a battle makes but few
calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations
lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat:
how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention
to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

Whether performing a routine upgrade or making a massive infrastructure change, if you haven’t performed the appropriate amount of planning you will most likely fail. The more planning you perform the more likely you are to succeed, and the more likely you will be prepared for any problems you encounter.

When you make plans your imagination must be fully engaged. Visualize the tasks ahead of you, re-arranging them in time and space, step forward and backward through the process. In this way, you will recognize potential pitfalls and devise methods to avoid or mitigate against them.

As the plans solidify in your mind, document them in written form (Wiki, text document, paper, anything). Use this document to engage the opinions and imaginations of people you trust. Their experience and alternate view of the situation will help bring to light anything you may have missed. Use this information to refine your plans, incorporating their advice.

For small projects, a miniature version of the above process will suffice. You may not even need to write anything down for a small enough project, but don’t neglect planning. When scaling up for larger projects, make sure to build in some checkpoints for re-assessing your plans and dealing with anything which may have cropped up. As projects grow in complexity it becomes more import to build in extra flexibility.

No matter what the time frame, make sure to take time for planning. You will not regret it.

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is considered essential reading in many disciplines, but is not typically a requirement for students of Information Technology. I posit, however, that Sun Tzu’s teachings can be applied across many disciplines (I’ll even go as far as to claim any discipline), including IT.

With this series of posts, I intend to pull out key phrases from The Art of War and show how their principles can be applied within various IT disciplines. Not all of Sun Tzu’s wisdom can be directly applied, so I will not be performing a verse-by-verse analysis. There are, however, some sections or verses which should lend themselves to certain IT situations such as building and maintaining infrastructure, security strategies (lots there) and disaster recovery tactics. Here I intend to share with you my IT-focused ideas, as inspired by Sun Tzu.

For this series, I will read through this translation available from Project Gutenberg. All of my section/verse references will refer to that translation. Note that the translator’s notes are included in this version.

As an aside, I highly encourage everyone to explore Project Gutenburg’s catalog of works, as it is the largest repository of public domain e-texts that I know of, and has many classics available to download for free.

Next time: The core of Laying Plans.