Sometimes we are faced with situations in which two or more people are working with a common goal and there is a mutual dependence on delivery: the work of one person cannot be deployed without the other fulfilling the agreed and vice versa. In this scenario, if one of the people delays his or her part, all delivery is compromised.
Depending on the culture of the company, that person who has been delayed may suffer some kind of punishment. Is going to have to explain in detail what happened, will be going to be under pressure to deliver as soon as possible, and in more extreme situations may not be promoted or even get fired.
But what happens when all people involved know that the agreed deadline will not be met?
Out of fear (lack of courage?), no one wants to be the first to break the ice and then comes a situation of deadlock, known as Schedule chicken. All are waiting, in the expectation that another person is the first to say that will not be able to deliver what was agreed, causing the date of delivery of all to be extended, leaving the person who brought the information to be held accountable and eventually penalized for the delay alone.
And this deadlock can continue until the deadline, which worsens the whole situation, since at this time the people involved will be forced to face reality in a situation where they can no longer take any action to get around the problem. The result can only be one: the project will delay and the client will only be informed of this on the same day she expected to receive the delivery.
If this type of situation is recurrent, a common long-term effect is for the client to lose confidence in the team. The consequences may be the imposition of stricter contracts, micromanagement or other practices that are detrimental to both parties.
Conclusion
It is very important to always give feedback to the client as soon as possible, controlling their expectations. When we are more transparent and courageous, we can resolve this type of situation described in this article in other ways, the most obvious being to decrease the scope of delivery and reviewing customer priorities. Or, in other words, working in an agile way, adapting to the inevitable changes we encounter throughout the software development process.
References
- Planning Extreme Programming, Kent Beck and Martin Fowler (page 33).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schedule_chicken
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