The trade-offs in planning work, reporting progress, and delegating

Imagine you are the owner of a busy, successful, swanky city centre restaurant. You employ 15 staff at the restaurant, including a restaurant manager to run things day today, and your restaurant can seat around a hundred customers. The restaurant enjoys an enviable and growing reputation for quality food and wine, and excellent service, in hospitable surroundings. In short, it is a success.

Early one evening, a small party of new customers are eating in one of the most popular corners of the restaurant. They are clearly loving it: the well-heeled group have all enjoyed starters, are finishing their main course – and, having finished a couple of bottles of your finest (and most profitable) wine, are about to order three more bottles, plus cheeses and desserts. It looks like coffees may follow.

Great! Happy customers, enjoying themselves, and willing to order the best of everything, with prices to match.

But there is a problem.


It is 7:45pm. Another couple, who are amongst your most regular, loyal customers and advocates, have a table booked for 8:00pm – their regular slot – and they are on their way. They would normally sit in the place occupied by the new party, and it is clear the table will not be free any time soon. Worse still, almost every other table in the restaurant is busy too. You are operating at close to capacity.

Your restaurant manager needs to decide what to do for the regular, loyal customer. Options include:

• Apologise to the loyal customers and offer them a free drink at the bar until their preferred table becomes free;
• Offer your loyal customers an alternative table at the back of the restaurant, which is free but is known not to be their preference;
• Inform the new party that you will need the table back by 8:00pm latest, to encourage them to conclude.


Hopefully they don’t choose the third option!

If this situation arises on a regular basis, then the restaurant manager has a choice to make.

They could choose to provision additional tables, and not operate close to capacity, knowing that this spare availability will better allow them to accommodate customers as required. The downside is, they will not be as busy / generating as much income as the maximum capacity of tables would allow.

Alternatively, a strategy would be to run the restaurant up to maximum capacity, knowing that at times it would mean some customers would have to wait.

The key trade-off

In short, there is a trade-off between being busy and being predictable. The more predictable the restaurant attempts to be – honouring the times of all bookings – the more it needs to hold something in contingency, and therefore will not be as busy as it could be. Conversely, the more the restaurant works to maximise the use of all tables, the less successful it will be in being able to honour the times of restaurant bookings – it will be less predictable.

This is analogous to delivering projects. Executives often want to know whether the project is on schedule first and foremost. It is a natural question to ask; it is an easy question, with a measurable answer that is simple to understand, and it avoids getting into the details. Unfortunately, it also overlooks where the key business value normally lies.

Most seasoned project managers are aware of this, and consequently in traditional projects they tend to stuff their delivery schedules with spare time, to accommodate any fluctuations, so that the appearance is still of being on time. They identified the fact that they are primarily being measured by hitting a delivery schedule, and the natural reaction is to do what is necessary to appear to achieve that.

But is that always the best strategy to serve the business’ true interests?

In the agile world, the emphasis is placed on being busy rather than being predictable. Work is delivered in small increments or iterations, and the highest priority is placed on keeping the team as busy as possible on the highest value work over a very short time-frame. As part of the natural trade-off, this means that schedules are less predictable. However (placing the inevitable internal politics aside), the business is actually in a better position with the second, agile approach, getting more value faster, rather than adherence to schedule as a primary success factor.


This links quite nicely with the ‘Iron Triangle’ project management concept. In traditional projects, the scope (“requirements” / “quality”) is often fixed, as is the schedule. So – guess what suffers? Cost.

By contrast, an agile project tends to approach a challenge with “Let’s see what we can achieve with a team of X and in Y weeks”. It is driven by a vision. The time and costs are fixed – what can be delivered is the key variable. And when enough has been delivered, and the team are no longer adding enough value, the project stops.

Trust

So far, so good. But there is an extra dimension to this…

If it were your business, would you put the emphasis on being busy, or being predictable? Given the above, most business owners would put the emphasis on being busy. It clearly gives better business and comes over time.

Let’s go back to the restaurant analogy. Suppose the restaurant manager is an employee of yours, somebody who you know moderately well, but have not worked with for a long time. They are probably aware that if a customer cannot be seated according to the booking, it is likely to be reflected in customer feedback, and the that will work its way back to you. So, they will likely attempt to a seat every customer on time, even though they are not operating the restaurant at capacity. But in a competitive world, where you are trying to maximise the value from your restaurant and turn a better profit, operating at capacity might be a better option.

Now, imagine that the restaurant manager is actually your husband or wife, not an employee. They are fully invested in the family business. Any profit you make is also their profit. T heir successes is fully tied to the restaurant success and your success. Now, how would they call it given the dilemma of been busy being predictable?

Interestingly, in training courses, when I asked trainees what choice the restaurant manager would make, most people would say the restaurant manager would emphasise being predictable … until it is revealed they are a member of your family. Then, if this seems the expectation switches to being busy.

Why the difference?

Because when the restaurant manager is a member of your own family, they have skin in the game. They are committed as you are. They will take the same position is that you would take. In short, you trust them to take the right decision on your behalf. Their interests are aligned with yours, without even asking.

So, in the world of business, what position would you be expecting your middle managers to take when such a situation arises in a project?

More traditional thinking would continue to measure their success by adherence to project schedule. A more enlightened approach would measure their success by how well they are working towards the best business outcome, and that is more closely aligned to keeping as busy as possible on the highest priorities at all times; and they would be trusted to make that call day to day on your behalf.

If this last approach feels uncomfortable to you as a leader, perhaps asking about schedules suggests that your middle management are not trusted enough to make true business decisions on your behalf – or not being measured and motivated in the correct way.