The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

by Camille Fournier

Run the project and adjust the plan as you go. The value of a good planning process is that it helps you know approximately how far the project has come, and approximately how far it is from completion. As things slip (and they always do), keep everyone apprised of the status. But now, instead of guessing how far you have to go, you can clearly point to the milestones that have been hit and outline the expected remaining work. Use the insights gained in the planning process to manage requirements changes. You learned a lot by breaking down the project given the original set of requirements. If requirements start to change midflight, take those insights and apply them to the changes. If the changes add significant risk to the project, necessitate a bunch of new planning, or simply require a lot of additional work, be clear about the cost of those changes. If you’re working toward a hard deadline, knowing roughly the effort required will help you prioritize, cut, and simplify work to get the best compromise of features, quality, and delivery date. Revisit the details as you get close to completion. Toward the end of the project, the tedium returns. It is time to really attend to the finishing details. What is missing? What testing? What verification? Run a premortem, an exercise where you go through all the things that could fail on the launch of this big project. Decide where the line for “good enough” is, socialize it, and commit to it. Cut the work that falls below the “g...