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This is gonna be a bit of a hard to answer question with there being too many variables.

I'm a worker. And i have missed plenty of deadlines.

I have come to the personal opinion that a missed deadline is always the fault of poor management. This is of course not entirely true but in most cases is seems the management overscoped the project and/or made a silly deadline.

Note: i think it's worth mentioning that i have only ever worked in China!

Real life example of older workspace: (You can skip the the last paragraph, I'm just venting)

I was asked create a program for printing data to paper, it should be configurable and easy. I talked to him about different ways to do this, and we agreed on a WYSIWYG solution resembling Word. I sat down for a few days a created a complete project spec and specified: Beta after 3 months and an extra 2 months for test and patch. (I'd like to give 1 month but that has proven insufficient in the past, with changes and whatnot) Totaling 5 months. I gave him the document, he took the paper, i went away and after a few minutes he mailed me "OK" for everything (He mentioned no specifics), and i have 1 month to finish it. (I assume he skimmed it and trashed it) After 6 months the project wasn't even finished seeing as he kept coming to me with project changes.

Looking back i see many cases where this happened. Overscope, changes or impossible deadlines. I did consider that perhaps i got it backwards. That 1 month means i need to thin out the project in order to fit that time-frame. But this was not communicated. I've seen my coworkers start on projects that from the onset has overtime included. So i have fallen to the understanding that project managers can't manage projects. If i work 8 hours a day for the entire period (not 9gag!) then a missed deadline is not my problem. And as such, I've grown to ignore deadlines altogether cause it's the responsibility of the manager that the deadline and project spec matches.

Ok. So i do not wish to ask whether or i was wrong or not is this example. (You're welcome to talk about it) But i would rather like to know, what are the symptoms of poor management

And with the authority game and my competence at stake. What can i do as a worker when presented with a "Death march".

CyberFox
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  • You have to keep in mind that clients (and that can include management) don't know what they want to have until they see something that almost but not quite fits the bill. – Bart van Ingen Schenau Oct 08 '17 at 12:22
  • Welcome to classic project management! See the "origin" paper: Managing the Development of Large Software Systems Also see The Project Management Triangle minimizing concern for quality and completely ignoring producing value. – Alan Larimer Oct 08 '17 at 13:26
  • You can only work to an agreed upon schedule, feature set and team size. If they've reduced the schedule but not specified the feature set reduction, then you're now in a no-man's land in terms of expectations. What you should have done (this is potentially not localised to your culture) is immediately and clearly communicated that you need to know what work is meant to fit into this month. Now you're 6 months in, a month over your estimate (which sounded pretty low) and unless you've kept track of all the changes and communicated their impact as they came in, you may be seen to be at fault. – Rob Grant Oct 08 '17 at 13:35
  • So have you missed the deadlines that you committed to (been pressured to commit)? Or they missed their deadlines? – Vlad Oct 09 '17 at 19:27
  • @Vlad i don't understand your question? – CyberFox Oct 13 '17 at 03:47

3 Answers3

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Your story suggests three issues you are facing: 1) project management maturity, 2) an understanding of schedule variability, and 3) human performance factors and biases.

You describe a work environment that has very little project management processes and capability well defined. You describe a lack of planning processes, a lack of risk management processes, a lack of change management processes, and a lack of communications, and your title shows that your organization is not defining accountability and responsibility. I am not sure your organization would know the difference between the two. This is quite a large topic so I'll leave this at: start a PM 101 and go from there.

Your second issue is around schedule variability. Work is always variable--from the most simplest of tasks to the most complex, if you were to perform the task several hundred times, you would produce quite a range of results by way of total duration and total cost. You have both aleatory and epistemic variables that cause the range of results and you can only mitigate the latter type. So your estimates should be provided in this range. Instead of "5 months," you would provide a more appropriate estimate of 3 months to 8 months, most likely 5--or whatever it really is as I just made these numbers up. So when you understand your estimated range, you can escalate the risk to your stakeholders when the targets come in at the aggressive side of your curve. With proper processes in place--see #1--that risk would be captured and communicated out and you can continue your work as normal.

The third problem is human performance and biases. As PMs, we deal with estimates coming in from the team that has bias attached to it. Sometimes it is optimistic, others pessimistic. Other types of biases are at play, too, such as anchoring, recency, primacy, etc. PMs have to negotiate this in order to arrive at an aggressive, competitive, but achievable target within an estimated range while dealing with other business pressures about which you may have no idea.

Also, regarding performance, we have a tendency to procrastinate. Two phenomena we cope with are Student Syndrome and Parkinson's Law. Both of these are costly and inconsistent with a competitive environment. So many times putting a challenge on the team, bringing in targets, causes those targets to be achieved WITHOUT compromise to quality. Of course, doing this too much can wreak havoc, so it is a tool you need to smartly use.

So to answer your question, the lack of PM processes your OP suggests would be an indicator of poor management; however, aggressive targets may not be for the reasons I indicated above.

David Espina
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  • Great answer. my 2 cents : could you add some suggestions for the poster, who seeks advice for his situation where regular business and project management practices are probably not followed? – Gürkan Çetin Oct 08 '17 at 16:35
  • Elaborate answer. Good points. I would like to add another question. At whatever time in future i move to next company how would i determine whether or not they are doing proper project management. My current checklist is just. "Project scope precision", "amount of project changes" and "handling of failure". – CyberFox Oct 09 '17 at 01:01
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    @CyberFox Great question! However, please post this as a separate new question. – Ashok Ramachandran Oct 09 '17 at 01:11
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  • 1, very good answer. I would add another bias : planning fallacy
    • – DesignerAnalyst Oct 09 '17 at 05:07