Try this next time delivery is delayed, and Estimates are taken as Deadlines

Photo by Tim Swaan on Unsplash

There are only 2 viable options when project delays occur — move the deadline or reduce scope. Use Confidence Level to help keep focus on these 2 options.

The release date has been set, the product backlog has been (sufficiently) defined, the team is set to go and delivery confidence is high coming out of release planning — everyone is ready and pumped to deliver this project!

Things are going well until 2 months in, the team find themselves at that all too familiar juncture — they are falling behind for one reason or another. The good news is that it has become obvious now. Even better, the team has data to support their forecast — based on historical velocity, a sized backlog and remaining work — they have estimated work will be completed in 12 months time. The bad news is also that the work will be done by in 12 months time — 3 months out from the initial plan.

You might have come across such projects — where even though everyone is convinced they’re ‘doing’ Agile because there are daily stand-ups and sprints, the reality is that there is also an expectation for teams to deliver a fixed scope to a fixed time.

We’ll ask for estimates and treat them as deadlines

When faced with delays, most projects will make one of the below decisions:

1. Move the deadline — “Let’s push out the release date in order to deliver the scope”
2. Reduce scope — “Let’s reconsider the scope so we can deliver on time”
3. Throw money at the project — “We’ll hire 2 more developers to help the team get back on track”
4. Cut quality — reducing test case coverage / working weekends / cancelling Retros / reducing testing time-frames / acquiring technical debt / not burning down on tech debt — are all quality compromises presented in different ways.

Adding people to a delayed project does not help.

And if sacrificing quality is a non-negotiable, then that only leaves us with 2 viable options — moving the deadline or reducing scope. If you agree with this assessment and want to help your colleagues and stakeholders keep conversations focused on revising scope and/or deadlines, I would recommend using ‘Confidence Level’.

Confidence Level

Confidence level or fist of five voting is typically a value from 1 to 5 which the team comes up with to indicate their confidence in delivering the defined scope in time. 1 means ‘no chance’ and 5 is ‘no problem, we’ve got this!’.

If scope and time are fixed, confidence level will be the variable. Think of it as a revised Project Management Triangle:

In a scenario where a project is running late, and before either scope or time has been revised, the confidence level will be low. Teams can use the confidence level value to help inform decision making on scope and deadline — “Right now, based on the given scope and deadline our confidence level is 1. To bring our confidence level to 5, we estimate that we’ll require an additional 2 sprints. Alternatively we can also get to 5 by removing feature x from scope.”

And quoting Ron Jeffries (2004), better still if the team could provide commentary such as: “As we go forward we’ll all see how fast we’re progressing, and our estimate of the time needed will improve. In every case, you’ll see what is going on, you’ll see concrete evidence of useful software running the tests that you specify, and you’ll know everything as soon as I know it.”

I like using confidence level to inform decision making on scope and quality because:

• It is simple for teams to use and everyone to understand
• It provides immediate feedback on how confident the team is to deliver to scope and time. Are we on a death march?
• It has a sliding scale that can be used to facilitate and keep trade-off discussions active
• The delivery team might have seemingly little influence on scope and time, but confidence level is assessed and set by the team. No one can tell them what their confidence level of delivering their own work is.
• Gives the delivery teams a voice and requires them to use it!

Next time your project runs late, try using confidence level to drive and inform the next steps. In fact, there’s no need to wait for a delay to come up, you can use confidence level at any time to get immediate feedback from the people doing the work on delivery of the work.