Deadlines and Evening the Load

Setting goals, milestones and deadlines helps keeping the pace. I am very happy how our team works, but there is one aspect I really don't like: heroic pushing just before the finish line. Of course I appreciate the effort. But what I don't like is moving Heaven and Earth in the final days or even hours, especially as weeks or months prior to the checkpoint we were cool and relaxed. This is bad planning in part and bad management in part. And probably even bad leadership.

Because the load should be even from the start and we should have kept pushing from the very beginning.

One aspect only very few project managers I met executed well was a precise estimate of the critical path. This is especially difficult in projects that are geographically spread and when moving of physical parts is involved.

Last year we had a very serious and hard to find bug in the A-series prototypes of circuit boards. We found the bug but could not fix it on our own, as it required special tools to remove a 300-pin BGA chip. So being in a hurry, we shipped it overnight to our manufacturing partner. They fixed it and shipped back using economy saver option (instead of express air). It took 8 days to get the board back. Then they had national holidays. Then we had national holidays. Almost a month wasted, right in the middle of the project. And now when we are crossing the finish line we are fighting for single hours to meet the deadline.

You know: a day is a day. 24 hours, no more no less. And it is the same 24 hours in the middle of a project stint as it is close to the end. A day or a second lost will not be recovered. Formula 1 teams know this so well.

I wish we wholly embraced the Formula 1 mindset: detailed team preparation and pushing evenly and from the start. Calculating every planned pit-stop and every chance of rain into the strategy and execution. Actually startups do not differ from Formula 1 that much. They both operate on the edge, with no backup, moving extremely fast, with no room for error. This makes both difficult, but exclusive and fun, with most rewards being a result of flawless execution.

(Image by Royal Dutch Shell plc)