4 ms·
If you bury it as others suggest, you will lose credibility as a leader even if you have covered yourself. There is no good answer to “Why are we finding out ab
by mathattack 8y ago
If you bury it as others suggest, you will lose credibility as a leader even if you have covered yourself. There is no good answer to “Why are we finding out about a 3 month slip the Friday before deployment? If we are 3 months behind shouldn’t we have more than a day of notice?” Execs hate surprises and engineers hate bosses who don’t tell the truth.
The key to surviving this is:
1) Informally let everyone who may look bad know the truth.
2) Gather data. (No metric is perfect but this takes it away from being about people)
3) When it comes time to present formally, list what you are doing about it and what everyone else needs to do. It should be worded as, “To hit this date, we need Jane QA to do X, Joe PM to pick the two most important features, bla bla...”
4) Document #3 in a plain-English follow-up email. List names not orgs.
5) Send weekly updates to number 4 in writing.
If people don’t give you the help you need, you’ve done your part. They also won’t be surprised.
In all of this, be specific, factual and unemotional.