How to Make Things Faster

Chapter 59. Your C-Level Feedback Loop

Knowing how-long is the key to answering two questions that will define the primary interface between your project team and the people who are counting on you to succeed.¹ The questions your C-level executives are going to need you to answer are:

1. If we do x, will it relieve our symptom? How much?

2. We did x. Did it relieve our symptom? How much?

These are really the same question, just asked at different points on a timeline. An executive will ask the first question prior to an investment, and the second one after the investment. Together, they form a feedback loop: the first question uses incomplete information to stimulate an action, and the second question uses more-complete information to evaluate how successful that action was (and by implication, how successful you were).

The best way to answer the how-long question is by tracing. You could also answer it with a stopwatch (or a sundial if the problem is bad enough), but a trace is better, because it prepares you to answer the why, what-if, and what-else questions that are coming next.

¹ Or, depending on your circumstance, how-many or how-much.