Bulldozer00's Blog

In order for those in charge (and those who are in charge of those who are in charge ad infinitum) to track and control a project, someone has to estimate when the project will be 100% complete. For any software development project of non-trivial complexity, it doesn’t matter who conjures up the estimate, or what drugs they were on when they verbalized it, the odds are huge that the project will be underestimated. That’s because in most corpo command and control hierarchies, there is always implicit pressure to underestimate the effort needed to “get it done”. After all, time is money and everyone wants to minimize the cost to “get it done”. Even though everybody smells the silent-but-deadly stank in the air and knows that’s how the game is played, everybody pretends otherwise.

The graph below shows a made up example (like John Lovitt, I’m a patholgical liar who makes everything up, so don’t believe a word I say) of a project timeline. On day zero, the obviously infallible project manager (if you browse linkedin.com, no manager has ever missed a due date) plots a nice and tidy straight (blue) line to the 100% done date. During the course of executing the project, regular status is taken and plotted as the “actual” progress (red) line so that everybody who is important in the company can know what’s going on.

For the example project modeled by the graph, the actual progress starts deviating from the planned progress on day one. Of course, since the vast majority of project (and product and program) managers are klueless and don’t have the expertise to fix the deficit, the gap widens over time. On really dorked up projects, the red line starts above the blue line and the project is ahead of schedule – whoopee!

At around the 90-95% scheduled-to-be-done time, something strange (well, not really strange) happens. Each successive status report gets stuck at 90% done. Those in charge (and those who are in charge of those who are in charge ad infinitum) say “WTF?” and then some sort of idiotic and ineffective action, like applying more pressure or requiring daily status meetings or throwing more DICs (Dweebs In the Cellar) on the project, is taken. In rare cases, the project (or product or program) manager is replaced. It’s rare because project (and product and program) managers and those who appoint them are infallible, remember?

So, is “continuous replanning”, where new scheduled-to-be-done dates are estimated as the project progresses, the answer? It can certainly help by reducing the chance of a major “WTF” discontinuity at the 90% done point. However, it’s not a cure all. As long as the vast majority of project (and product and program) managers maintain their attitude of infallibility and eschew maintaining some minimum level of technical competence in order to sniff out the real problems, help the team, and make a difference, it’ll remain the same-old same-old forever. Actually, it will get worse because as the inherent complexity of the projects that a company undertakes skyrockets, this lack of leadership excellence will trigger larger performance shortfalls. Bummer.