OODA Loop for Projects
OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) applied to large-scale project coordination. The key insight: most large projects are bottlenecked on information processing, not execution. Getting complete information is often the hard part of the project.
Running a fast OODA loop means:
- Spending real time on it: coordination is a primary job, not a background overhead
- Communicating uncomfortably much: multiple daily touchpoints in high-stakes phases; constantly seek updates from all threads
- Tracking biggest open questions: maintain a ranked list of top uncertainties; resolving them IS the priority list; parallelize across people
- Reorienting frequently: review priorities multiple times a day; parallelizing the top few items reduces switching costs when you reprioritize
The general principle: every decision in a complex project is constrained by how fast information can round-trip across the people who hold it. The project management job is to minimize that round-trip time.
Pairs with plan-for-victory: the plan sets the target; the OODA loop detects when you're drifting from it.