Oh, the omnipresent deadline. I know people love them and the huge whooshing noise they make when they fly past.
Software development is tricky work and it is tricky because it is not linear. In a linear process, when you are building something that takes 10 people, you can get it done twice as fast if you add 10 more people.
In software development it is not so easy. I believe that software development is geometric in complexity and sometimes adding people or adding tasks more than doubles the risk or the effort needed to complete a project.
That being said, everyone wants to know the ETA. It is important that people realize it is an “E” and not always an “A”. There are genuine reasons to ask for an ETA and genuine reasons why it is always wrong. That does not mean it is a bad question. In fact it is a very important question.
The number one response that everyone gives to an ETA is generally an acceptance that it is imperfect. I giggle inside when someone says”I am working on it right now.” That completely does not answer the question, and since it imparts almost zero valuable information, generally sets off a cascade of events. I am guilty of this. You are guilty of this. We all need to acknowledge that this is a perfectly acceptable initial reaction to being challenged with a deadline and move past it to really answer the question.
I have developed my own personal method for dealing with this question. I understand you will read it here and throw it in my face when you hear it, but I use it anyway and it will poison my little science experiment. When people ask me for an ETA, I often just respond “Whatever I tell you will be wrong. Do you want me to just make something up or get my work done?” and then go back to doing whatever I was doing.
This is an oddly useful answer. If you asked me for an ETA because you really want me to be done RIGHT NOW, you are probably going to leave me alone. That also tells me I should really hurry up.
If you reopen the conversation with a “we need to update the management” or “but someone wants to update <insert project management device>”, that means you really want me to give you a guess and hopefully will follow up with another question.
Having an ETA is really only useful to me as a manager if it is wrong. If it is right, then I did my job so good I should be on a beach right now sipping margaritas and fist bumping all my team when I get back. They are doing an amazing job and hopefully will be in the 0.1% someday because of how awesome they are. We all know the people who are always on time with their projects also walk on rainbows, and their sneezes contain glitter and smell like cotton candy and freshly baked pie. That is to say, that the person or project that is always on time, especially in the world of startups, is a rare fiction.
When an ETA is wrong, it is really useful because it leads to a secondary conversation. “Why did it change?” Project management, software management, and team management are all about this particular question. Why was there a change? All of these things are a form of change management and that is what really makes this stuff so tricky. It is like playing hockey with a self-aware puck that has (a) a jet pack and (b) low pain tolerance. Stuff is moving and not in a way you want it to. Having an ETA and understanding when that ETA moves is only mildly helpful on your current project. It will get you to check the boxes that need to be checked before the end of the day arrives. If that is all you are getting out of your ETA, then you are missing the real value of it.
The most important part of understanding why the ETA changed, is to incorporate those inputs into your next preflight mental checklist. Every failure, every misstep, and everything that goes wrong has to make it into the playbook in some capacity.
If you can do this perfectly every time, eventually you will have that glitter-sneezing team that ships everything on time.
If you do, I want to meet them and give them a handshake or fist bump. If I duck out of the way when they sneeze, it is probably because my wife doesn’t want glitter in the house.
Thanks again for reading! Looking forward to catching up with you all again next week!
