I’m back now with a second in a series of white paper reviews for Camel, complete with film clips that relate to some of the key revelations. The first one was fun writing (comments are welcome, as always); we’ll tackle another paper from Johanna Rothman for Villanova University in the second edition: “What To Do When Your Project Slips“.
“When Your Project Slips” is important reading for anyone who has ever found essential work (product testing, for instance) ignored or excluded from the project’s timeline, and sadly discovering that the work needs scrapping altogether due to time constraints and failure to provide the essential time allotment. If it’s so important, you’d have set aside the right amount of time, so the thinking goes. But managing a project right means that you didn’t get it 100% right all the way through, all of the time – slips and failures have to be accounted for if its to be done right. As Rothman writes,
“The first slip is the initial indication that something is wrong. Don’t think you can make up time. You can’t. Use the first slip to evaluate what’s going on vs. what you’d like to have going on. When you hit the third or fourth slip, you’ve lost the schedule battle.”
Let’s delve further into Rothman’s work today.
Rothman on ‘Schedule Slips’
“When software projects begin slipping, they’re talking to you. The first slip is a whisper: ‘Your expectation is not matching my reality. Listen. I can tell you my reality.’ If you ignore the first slip, the second slip is a murmur: ‘Things aren’t quite right. Don’t you want to know what’s going on?’ By the third slip, the project says: ‘Knock-knock. Are you there? Don’t you want to know what’s going on?’ At the fourth slip, the project yells: ‘Hey, you! You didn’t listen when you could act. Now you’ll have to pay.’
“As an observant project manager, when you detect an early schedule slip, you have several options, all related to the project quality requirements and project constraints common to every project…
“…After a couple of schedule slips, when you’re in detailed design or early implementation, it may be possible to inject more people into the project, or change the way you work.”
My take
This is not your typical white paper, but rather, you’ll discover that it has more informality and familiarity. It’s everyday people, complete with first-hand know-how that serves us with a project person’s experience.
As to the words listed above, I’m reminded of a film that won’t let me embed all of the YouTube clips properly, save for this one.
Whatever: Kevin Kline fans will easily recognise this as the film Dave, an everyman doppleganger to the President snatched up in a pinch as a sort-of propped up, Banana republic dictator, stuck at the mercy of his puppeteers. Or so the puppeteers thought.
Watching those clips back-to-back reminds me of Rothman’s point in a roundabout way: although most movies that tie in well with project management themes tend to involve new discoveries that throw monkey wrenches into our plans (see later), these Dave clips are refreshing in the providance of a new set of eyes on problems that have never seemed to be easily sorted before. Going bit-by-bit with a CPA who’s anything but embedded in Washingtonian think, they trim the unnecessary budget fat using their fresh perspectives (“it may be possible to inject more people into the project, or change the way you work”).
I love it when a good flick comes together with a good white paper point. Which is more than I can say for our next film example.
Rothman on “Late in the project slips”
Then came the key question: “When did the testers know what to test, if the requirements, design, and implementationwere late?” The answer?: “Last week.” Uh oh.
I asked one more question: “How much testing did you plan for this project?” They looked at each other. “Well we planned about six weeks worth, but I guess we won’t get to that now.” These people were not stupid. They had a simple problem with a huge cascading effect. Then they had trouble hearing the reality of their project.
It’s extremely difficult to recover from late-in-the-project slips. Our only options are to extend the schedule, increase project costs, or change the work environment. In this situation, see if you can change what people are doing. I find that peer review or inspections of every fix helps reduce the number of bad fixes.
My take
No comment on the “stupid people” statement – I’ll take her word for it whilst shaking my head in astonishment. This real-life experience Rothman alludes to is vintage in terms of project people that didn’t allow for the possibility of testing, plain and simple. The possibilities (especially the bad ones) in the development process were not anticipated in any allotment of time & scheduling consideration. Frankly, the “we won’t get to that now” comment speaks volumes to determining if they ever met, took notes, or gave true, considered thought to addressing any and all resulting issues along the way. It wasn’t just that they brushed it away at the end – it was that they were never prepared for it ahead of time, because, well shucks, things ran late, you know?
Naturally, you need professional project management to avoid the late slips that end up sending your project reeling. You need to catch everything to avoid the “well shucks” shoulder shrug: think of it as a 60-foot birdie putt that effectively negotiates three twists but not the fourth, leaving you 20 feet short to secure a difficult par. Your project ends up losing a stroke if you address nearly every single bit, but it can’t finish on time because you haven’t allotted time for testing.
Also naturally, I thought of Groundhog Day (which – full disclosure – I’m not a fan of):
If you want to get out of the rut of endless project mistakes that will doom you to failure, you’ve got to do the right things to address those mistakes. Ideally, you’d like to catch them early; realistically, you catch them mid-way. Phil caught them late and lost roughly a score of days of his life along the way. Sure, Phil didn’t need to buy that much insurance to break the cycle and move on to February 3rd already, but he was a project that was being poorly managed. He had some slips that needed addressing. There was no deadline; truth is, he could’ve spent the rest of his life figuring out the secret to not waking up to “I’ve Got You, Babe“. But who wants that aggro? Fixing what’s broken = Holding hands with Andie McDowell in the pure, fresh snow on a February morning. Eventually.*
Rothman’s “Summary”
If you’re still early in the project you have some options and the most appropriate ones for you depend on what’s driving your project. Clarify your project’s requirements and constraints and you’ll know better what to do. You can reduce the feature set by using peer review on all fixes (to decrease the number of badfixes), and re-plan the rest of the schedule in detail with the technical staff using inch-pebbles.
My take
Admittedly, those words seem to be rehashing things a bit, but including the Groundhog Day clip left me reeling, and I think we need something more pure and cleansing to end on.
Something like 12 Angry Men, which is impossible to write about without SPOILER ALERTING everyone this side of Walla Walla.
Lee J. Cobb had them all on his side at the beginning, when it was 11-1 guilty. But notice in our embedded clip (which comes late in the deliberation process) how all the jurors surround original holdout Henry Fonda; Cobb’s on an island, whilst Fonda’s got their attention. What on earth happened in between?
More and more crucial & considered evidence came to the fore, like evaluating the nature of emotional stress -
Also, there was the abundance of knives in the neighborhood, the consideration of the proper way to use a switch-blade, and the screams of a woman. All of it clarified the constraints of the “obviously he’s guilty” verdict. Look at that first embedded clip again: those jurors literally moved towards Fonda intently, hanging on the next layer of his hypothesis. Cobb, meanwhile is insulting, loud, and without the original thought and compass his counterpart clearly possesses. Whoever doubts the notion that a project manager works for his/her team should be required to compare & contrast the mannerisms of Cobb and Fonda, and tell me who makes a better project manager.
Back to the film. Unlike most projects, a trial could have one of three results (never forget the “hung jury” possibility) as an end-product. It doesn’t make for the best comparison to a project. But the verdict is a good way of looking at the project side of things, regardless of the outcome. Fonda and the other 10 jurors are coming around to solving it by taking in all the restrictions and constraints that make the “not guilty” solution possible. As one juror (the future Quincy, M.D.) states about the knife fights he grew up with, “Funny I never thought of it before, I guess you try to forget those things.” Yet he did recall it, and everyone else did as well, drawing on experiences, expertise and testing, and the project’s effective delivery of the most accurate verdict became more and more unavoidable to everyone in the room.
Except Cobb, the lone holdout, and his case for guilty is proving weaker and weaker without group-think on his side. And to think: everyone had the accused strung up from the beginning, a tragic example of group-think spurred on by personal agendas and consideration only of the elements of the trial/project, not the consideration of the potential holes in the case and the ultimate sub-elements of the trial/project. Project people are left to wonder -
- What if Fonda hadn’t discovered that first slip in the case?
- What if no one turned to their own experiences as reinforcement that acknowledged the other slips in the case?
- What if Fonda gave into group-think?
*-Lovely, now I’ve found a way to hate this movie even more: the anti-hero turned model citizen ends up getting Andie McDowell, and I didn’t laugh once along the way. Even Emilio Estevez’s borderline stalker in “St. Elmo’s Fire” had better reasons for landing McDowell than Murray’s character ever did. Frigging awesome.
Groundhog Day sign courtesy Eddie~S @ Flickr and re-used with permission.
