I'm not telling you when it'll be done because last time we needed to move a deadline you had everyone flogged
Disproof
Everyone is willing to give time-bound estimates of what theyâre doing, and everyone depending on those estimates is able to deal with estimates being off
Consequences
Non-product functions miss opportunity, miscommunicate to customers and generally not know when work is going to ramp up
Because people take months to hire, non-product functions scramble and screw up as new things come online to support and sell, or burn money over-allocating resources in anticipation of a product launch that may or may not happen this quarter
Working at the company starts to resemble early trench warfare. Nobody knows whatâs happening, they can only live in tense fear of the next rush over the top and scramble the moment they hear the thump of the guns and the sounding of the bugle. Good people will leave
Generally suffer efficiency losses as trust erodes, company gets outcompeted and dies
Causes
An environment where it is not safe to be wrong when unknowns cause delays, leading to learned helplessness of not even trying to estimate in the first place
Being very principled about âcanât rush qualityâ but forgetting:
The fact that money is not infinite and that the business needs to remotely look like a business
That all downstream activities need ramp-up time once something gets lobbed over the wall to document, translate, market, train support staff on etc
That thereâs a little thing called competition and that lunches will get eaten
Approaches
It needs to be psychologically safe to give a loose estimate and refine it
It needs to be psychologically safe to confirm progress towards a target
The questions are always the same: âwhen will it be done?â and âhow much is progress tracking to that estimateâ but the people having this discussion are going to feel very different based on what environment itâs being asked in
If something got mis-timed in the past and everyone is still bitter about it, you need to heal those wounds
I repeat:
It needs to be OK to ask for an educated guess on when something will be done
It needs to be OK to say âthat was a guess, hereâs a new one based on more informationâ as early as possible before the deadline passes
It is not a bad idea have at least 2 check-ins between start and expected finish. This is fundamentally because the earlier you know something is _not _going to be there at time T, the more room you have to adjust
Also ensure that itâs not a case of perfectionism. âPerfect is the enemy of doneâ can help unstick things if you're not being a prick about it
Also ensure that everyone is damn well acquainted with the fact that they arenât the only specialists in the company and that other specialists depend on them to know when they will need to do their jobs