Brook's Mythical Man Month chapter 14: Hatching a Catastrophe presented by Collin

Milestones or Millstones? -Most projects are set behind their deadlines because of numerous small setbacks instead of a single large problem. - The solution is to have a schedule! -Set dates by which certain milestones of the project should be complete -Milestones MUST be concrete, specific, measurable events, defined with knife-edge sharpness.

-When a member of a team is sure to hustle then that is a mark of a good teammate. -Working faster than seems necessary is desirable -In terms of schedule, a single, one day slip must not go unaddressed and must be remedied. The Other Piece Is Late, Anyway

Under the Rug -Often when the manager of a sub-team notices his team working behind schedule, he avoids telling his boss until he must, because he thinks the team might make it up. -This is because the interests of the first-line manager and those of the boss have inherent conflict here.

Reducing the role conflict -The boss must learn to distinguish between action information and status information. -The boss must discipline himself not to act on problems which his managers can solve, and never to act on problems when he is explicitly reviewing status. -When a manager knows his boss will accept status reports without panic or preemption, he comes to give honest appraisals.

Yanking the rug off -Nevertheless, it is necessary to have review techniques whereby the true status is made known, whether cooperatively or not. -On a large project one may want to review some part each week, making the rounds once a month or so.

-A worker at Bell Telephone Labs has also found it useful to have both scheduled and also estimated dates in the milestone report. This way things are prioritized better.

The end.