(2020-08-20) Rothman Why Minimize Management Decision Time

Johanna Rothman: Why Minimize Management Decision Time. I wrote Unearthing Your Project's Delays a couple of years ago. I told the story of Cliff, a manager who wanted to understand why the projects were so late. I gave several talks about that article. One eagle-eyed fellow asked me this question, “How long was the time from T0 to T1?” I said, “Managers might spend as little as a quarter and as much as a year or two. During that time, they kept asking the teams for forecasts of projects. So, much longer than T2-T5.” (decision-making)

The more I work with people on teams, with teams, and with managers, the more I am convinced starting with the teams is the “wrong” end to start

the teams cannot manage their managers' delays.

I still see so many teams spend weeks at a time estimating projects they won't start for years. Or, that someone is supposed to estimate ROI when no one has done any small experiments to see if anyone would buy/use this product/feature.

I do find value in forecasts for order-of-magnitude or ranges of dates

Let me show the impact management decision delays had on one team:

The managers started their portfolio decision meeting. They adjourned the meeting to get forecasts from the teams. The teams spent about a day of forecasting work, but the managers didn't take the time to meet again for three weeks. (Project Portfolio Management)

Then, the managers wanted detailed estimates for several feature sets. Those detailed estimates took the teams a week to create. However, the managers didn't meet for another three weeks.

The managers created 6 weeks of delays.

Then, the managers decided on the portfolio for the next quarter. Those decisions took a total of 2 hours. The managers spent 6 hours of work time and 1008 hours of wait time. The cycle time for that decision was 1014 hours. Two weeks into the quarter and the portfolio changed.

Did the forecasts and estimates make a difference in the managers' decisions? One senior manager sighed and said, “No. We had the top three projects at that first meeting. We could have decided then and there. To be honest, we could have put more teams on those three projects and finished them faster. We didn't need any of that forecasting or estimation data to make good decisions.” He paused for a moment. “We needed to work together and that was hard.”

When managers reduce the T0 to T1 time, the teams don't feel whiplash

Every time I see management chaos for the project portfolio, the organization's reward system is the root cause. When the managers have individual rewards that create competition: for teams, for marketing time, for product management, anything that the product needs, the managers compete with each other. The managers don't work together.