(2003-09-19) Macomber Commitments

Hal Macomber on managing Commitment-s: mind-blowing application of anti-MultiTasking to macro Project Management. To start the design of a project environment that is breakdown-tolerant let's consider how we make commitments. Remember, no commitments - no breakdowns. So let's make just those commitments we need to make to keep the promises of the project. One way to do that is to delay making commitments. I haven't said delay making the promises to the client. We must do that to get the contract. We need to say what value the client will receive by when for some agreeable price. We don't have to commit to what we will do 17 weeks from now. We might not even have to say what the product or service will be that provides the value. Only that the client will get the value intended. In this scenario we need a process or practice that allows us to navigate the promises to the client. By navigate I mean a practice of assessing our progress towards fulfilling our promises coupled to an ongoing practice of Planning conversations where project participants make commitments... The more commitments we have open at a given time the more likely it is that one will become in jeopardy... Taking this to the extreme, if we only make one commitment at a time, then we only have one possibility of a breakdown. Voila! Oh, you don't think that's possible or practical? Maybe not. But making 100s of commitments before we need to make them is creating the situation for disaster... (Agile Contract)