When the weather is clear and sunny, the temperature is temporate, the terrain is level and free of obstacles, and basic needs like food, shelter, and water are easy to obtain, it's fairly easy to travel across country. If you're pursuing some goal like getting to a particular city, all you need are some basic landmarks. Perhaps the city you are trying to get to lies on a north-south river, and you know you're north of the city; just head west until you come to the river, and head south; you'll get there. Even in the event of injuries which are serious but not life-threatening, as long as you have enough people, you can probably make up a plan as you go.

However, when you are in an ice storm, hanging on the side of a mountain, and have to make decisions about which route to take to continue upward, or whether to bivouac, or retreat, things can go downhill quickly. At this point, teamwork is critical, and someone has to take control of the situation and make decisions. Ff no one has ever attempted the route you are on, and thus there is no map, you and your team are likely to be in significant danger. The landmarks you have may not be recognizable. The practices you are used to using may not be working. The vision you had may suddenly be less motivating than the fear you are feeling.

You may have anticipated many of these problems, and through proactive risk management, prepared yourself with added supplies, a good first aid kit, and the means of calling for help. However, generally we don't foresee all the problems, or even the right ones, and problems tend to cascade quickly. Unless the team is prepared, has the right skills, and has effective leadership, it's likely that in such a setting, you might not get home when you had originally planned to.

Given this contrast, how can we take on projects that have never been done before, and commit to do them in fixed time? Things aren't always as personally dangerous as mountain-climbing by the uninitiated, but can certainly be as hazardous to the viability of a business or organization. In such settings, you need to craft a map, if you don't already have one, and use it to guide your preparation and assult on your objectives. It may not be a map of the terrain, but it can still be a map of your actions, so that you have the right provisions and preparation for what lies ahead. Here's a high level sketch of what such a map might look like:

1. Craft a compelling vision 
2. Build a foundation for communicating about possible paths towards that vision (definitions, work products, information classifications, and stories) to focus the action, slice and dice the work, and reinforce progress being made
3. Look for and categorize sources of information and knowledge which could be useful in exploring these various alternative paths
4. Recruit a pool of talent who can:
• evangelise the vision
• prototype and experiment to explore possible solution elements
• foster relationships across teams
• identify points of leverage for accelerating progress down various paths
• link together and build associations between information to synthesize it into useful datasets
• establish ways of evaluating various routes and thus suggesting optimum next steps
• create action plan sketches to identify work to do
5. Organize your teams into communities of practice to understand the different kinds of work that would be useful across all possible routes, and within specialized routes
6. Put in place an infrastructure (tools, communications channels, information repositories, etc) to share information
7. Establish a code of practice for these communities, and explore ways to inject energy and growth into them so they are self-sustaining
8. Document protocols for decision-making, communications, safety, managing commitments, and prioritizing action across these communities
9. Define an architecture to communicate concepts, allocate and review work, and accomodate evolution over time
10. Be tolerant of ambiguity and distributed ownership, but verify that the means exist to ensure that necessary standards and accountability will be achieved.
11. Identify critical decisions and required information and criteria needed to make them
12. Identify sources for new information needed
13. Build your infrastructure and organize communities towards collecting and validating that information
14. Capture and validate this information relevant to the needed critical decisions
15. Identify the existing gaps between current practice, the best, first tangible step of progress, and the target vision
16. Collect sources of risk from near, medium, and long-term frames of reference
17. Manage a reserve for unexpected events and known risks
18. Prioritize your decision-making around the gaps that exist and the resources that you have to take them on
19. Run experiments to close those gaps, or make progress towards those closures
20. Communicate schedule drivers, risks, and opportunities
21. Solicit participation in and commitments to tasks that are known but not yet owned
22. Assess overall capacity and capabilities and reconcile shortfalls
23. Track issues, problems, changes, and task assignments, so that an accurate assessment of where things are is available.
24. Establish periodic reviews of progress and expose to the community at large
25. Organize and implement the integration activities, to weave together the independent efforts
26. Be willing to adjust to changes in climate, terrain, or indigenous elements, and at all times, deal with realities