Win-Win is not Compromising

Implementing the rules of Critical Chain can be difficult and challenging. Resistance will come from many sides and accepting compromises may sometimes derail the best intentions, turning a Win-Win situation to an Everyone-Lose situation. Examples of compromising are:

• It may be emotionally draining for Project Managers to cut duration estimations when confronted by the resources; the compromise may be accepting a smaller than 50% buffer because people won't acknowledge or give up their hidden safeties.
• Avoid pipelining the projects all-together because it is difficult to get agreement on relative project priorities or access to the required resources.
• Tolerate task priorities not being followed by pacifying with excuses such as "At least we are getting visibility".

Remember that successful project execution is about getting results. To get results, one must focus on results. Results will be achieved quickly by changing rules, policies and measurements. Setup a monitoring system from Day One so that once managers and participants taste success, their mindset will be reinforced positively with the new changes. In addition, remove measurements that cause people to hide safeties into their duration estimates and force task priorities to be followed by pointing to systemic problems that must be solved. These measures can speed up the surfacing of good results. When there are results to show, then it's a Win-Win for everyone.

And that's the Execution Management Minute for this week.