In recent years I've focused my project management practice on so-called "adaptive" styles. These styles, which include techniques known as "agile" and "extreme" as well as many others, are different from tradition PM methods in that they set out from the premise that the future is to a large degree unknowable and unpredictable, and thus the old practice of creating large master plans that try to anticipate conditions years (or in some industries, merely months) in the future is a futile effort.

Instead, these adaptive methods presume from the start that you have to think small, focus on the things you know, work on increasing your knowledge as you work, and be equipped to deal with significant change as it comes along. These methods are based on the notion that the world will control you, not the opposite and that "controlling change," as traditional project managers expect to is a pipe dream.

LAX, and Los Angeles in general need to get with the reality, as this piece suggests. Planning beyond the limits of what's known is a waste. Holding the most important business asset in the region hostage to our inability to perfectly predict the future business, economic and political climate for years to come is only ensuring that we stand still while somehow hoping and waiting for the perfect plan.

There isn't a perfect plan. There's only what you know today, and it's plenty for the airport to work on even in the absence of a grandiose masterplan. Get started.