The Status Meeting
This afternoon, I dread going into the office. We are so far behind on so many projects. In the afternoon status meeting, I’m sure I’ll have to go into my standard list of excuses to explain why. And, how long will it will be before the others suspect that I have no idea about how to get back on track. There has got to be a better way.
Before the status meeting, I have some time to check in with a few of my team mates. I see everyone seems glued to their monitors or are typing away on something. A few people are already on the phone. If everyone is so busy, how did I get so far behind? I leave them along and start to think back to the beginning of a project’s planning phase. I ask each resource on the project how long a task will take to complete. The resources says two weeks (even though everyone knows anything about the task would say it would take only three to four days). Never the less, I enter ten days into the project plan.
Everyone Is Busy
Back in the office every resource has other tasks to work on. And, emergencies do come up. So, it makes sense to add in the extra seven days to protect the task’s due date. It’s the least I can do for my team, right? When dates are used to focus attention on completing tasks, dates become very important to the resources, to me, and to the managers I report to.
I look around and everyone is focused on their task due dates, I’m sure of it. If I’m rushed during our weekly status meetings, it’s the only thing we talk about. Sometimes there is an underlying feeling I can’t quite put my finger on. When a resource tells me they are going to miss their due date, I want to know why. I want jump in and fix things. I may have even blamed them for misrepresenting the effort needed or being negligent at not being able to estimate a proper task duration. It can get very heated. Not good.
My Flashback
I flash back to a meeting I had with Karen. She needed some help deciding on her priorities for the day. She was explaining to me that when a task she’s been assigned to is available to start, she will make a quick check to reminder herself about how much time was negotiated for the task. She will also estimate about how long the task will take to complete. She admitted that if there was enough time, she would put this original task aside and continue work on all the other tasks assigned to her. As the due date of the original task drew closer she would switch and do her best to get it done in the few days she had remaining. This worked out most of the time, but sometimes something would come up and she would miss the task’s due date anyway.
My daydreaming ends when I realize my eyes have glazed over. But, could this meeting with Karen be the source of some of my issues? For the original task, if she could focus on it and get it done as soon as she was able to start, the task would take no time at all. And, what if all my resources had the ability to start and finish most tasks without interruption? Could that be the key to getting our department back on track? It would help and I could use all the help I can get.
Two Basic Conditions
I wrote down that my project resources could only work this way if I continued to allow these two conditions exist:
-
- the safety is not removed from each of the tasks during planning.
- my resources believe during execution there is more than enough time.
I can see how why my project team think there is always enough time.
So, my next step is to do something about this situation, but what?