4 ms·
As a procrastinator, however, I can definitely say that the corollary is not true: work doesn’t shrink to fit available remaining time. Therefore, setting arbi
by pyrale 2y ago
As a procrastinator, however, I can definitely say that the corollary is not true: work doesn’t shrink to fit available remaining time.
Therefore, setting arbitrary deadlines as advocated in this article is the worst possible idea. It will only lead to deathmarching your teams to project collapse, especially on long-winded endeavours.
To me, the best way to proceed is let the team define small increments, and work with your reports to debug the issues they have in building them. No deadline is needed for that, just fine-grained involvement, focus on the workflow, and frequent discussions to see if the most recent stuff in progress is still valuable.
The solution to expansion of work is cutting less-valuable tasks, setting deadlines is just the lazy answer for uninvolved or unskilled managers.
- jimbokun 2y agoFirst, author recommends challenging but feasible deadlines, not "arbitrary" deadlines. Second, the "small increments" approach you describe is quite compatible with the approach of having workers give a status update every Friday. Requires determining what can be accomplished in a week, so you have something tangible to report on Friday.
- pyrale 2y agoYeah, one man’s "challenging but feasible" becomes the next man’s "arbitrary". The difference between small increments and giving a status updates every week is that if your task needs multiple status updates, it’s not small increments. Also small increments mean a piece of work that can measurably be evaluated as done. A status update is not a "done" status. If someone fails to deliver a small increment, you find out soon, and the team can re-assess, and it doesn’t carry the stigma of missing a deadline.