The Art of Project Management

13.3. Keeping it real

Some teams have a better sense of reality than others. You can find many stories of project teams that shipped their product months or years late, or came in millions of dollars over budget (see Robert Glass' Software Runaways, Prentice Hall, 1997). Little by little, teams believe in tiny lies or misrepresentations of the truth about what's going on, and slide into dangerous and unproductive places. As a rule, the further a team gets from reality, the harder it is to make good things happen. Team leaders must play the role of keeping their team honest (in the sense that the team can lose touch with reality, not that they deliberately lie), reminding people when they are making up answers, ignoring problematic situations, or focusing on the wrong priorities.

I remember a meeting I was in years ago with a small product team. They were building something that they wanted my team to use, and the presentation focused on the new features and technologies their product would have. Sitting near the back of the room, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with the presentation. None of the tough issues was being addressed or even mentioned. Then I realized the real problem: by not addressing the important issues, they were wasting everyone's time.

I looked around the room and realized part of the problem: I was the only lead from my organization in attendance. Normally, I'd have expected another PM or lead programmer to ask tough questions already. But with the faces in ...