
To finish projects on time, start every single step as late as possible - dirtyaura
https://twitter.com/fortelabs/status/770671266625785856
======
tdumitrescu
"26/ Ppl are generally happier: focus + flow + roadrunner mode (only 2 speeds,
100% & 0%) + fast results = happiness for both emp & co"

Wow, I just don't know what planet this employer lives on where employees
supposedly _enjoy_ sitting around idle until suddenly "holy crap tight
deadline must crunch to make it!" Every once in a while, fine that stuff
happens, but if a job were consistently putting me in "roadrunner mode" for
every project, I'd be out of there in roadrunner mode too. Preferably before
the anxiety and pressure turns into burnout.

~~~
tychoman
Tiago here.

Roadrunner mode probably sounds a lot like the "crisis mode" we're all used to
in most orgs, but it's actually more like supercompensation principle in all
types of learning and training. You focus w/ everything you have, and then
recover. Most orgs try to balance capacity, which results in this steady state
of draining yet not really productive work. Theory of Constraints (which is
what this thread is based on) says you should instead balance flow.

~~~
xorgar831
But why not say "starting working at the correct time" and address the issue
head on vs. playing psychological games?

~~~
tychoman
But what is the correct time? There is a whole subfield of project mgmt
dedicated to exploring the theories around this question. And the line between
"psychological games" and "psychology" is very thin, some would say non-
existent.

~~~
xorgar831
Exactly my point, figure out the correct time and optimize for that,
introducing what's effectively a neurosis seems kinda of neurotic way to work
:)

~~~
tychoman
But there is no correct time. That's a deterministic paradigm, whereas tasks
are probabilistic events, with a distribution of possible points. Take a given
task, and there are versions or scenarios where it takes 1x units of time, all
the way to 100x. What critical chain does is help the worker play with the 3
sides of the PM triangle, time, budget, and scope, in a way that optimizes for
the global throughput, not just their little local optimum.

~~~
xorgar831
That makes sense. Yep.

------
visakanv
I seriously love Tiago's work. I don't know if anybody remembers, but I once
wrote a post about procrastination that got to the frontpage of HN, a couple
of years ago [1]. And since then, I've been basically reading everything
relevant I've been able to get my hands on. (Here's a 'research review' of
sorts: [2]).

I'd put Tiago squarely in my top 3-5 list of 'People Who Get It'. I highly
recommend reading the rest of his work on the subject. [3]

__

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6468521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6468521)

[2] [http://visakanv.com/1000/0333-procrastination-
pt1/](http://visakanv.com/1000/0333-procrastination-pt1/)

[3] [http://www.fortelabs.co/blog](http://www.fortelabs.co/blog)

~~~
ap3
No rss on that blog, is this a thing now?

Harder to follow unless I go to Medium

~~~
tychoman
Yeah, sorry about that. Next best thing is to sign up for email updates:
[http://www.fortelabs.co/blog](http://www.fortelabs.co/blog)

------
IanCal
Isn't there a bit of a trick here in knowing when is "as late as possible" and
not "too late"? Does this not require knowing _exactly_ how long everything
will take?

~~~
bmh100
Another way of saying this is, do not waste effort by starting early on non-
critical tasks. This all has to do with the critical path, the series of
sequential, dependent tasks that determine the minimum project length.

Think of building a four-legged chair with multiple people (A, B, and C). You
need to cut the wood into legs, a seat, and a back. You need to buy wood from
the lumber yard, and buy screws and glue from the hardware store. You need to
sand and finish the wooden pieces. You need to assemble the pieces with screws
and glue.

The naive approach would be to have everyone go buy materials (and wait for
everyone to get back), then together cut the wood (and wait for everyone to
finish cutting), then together finish the wood, then together assemble the
chair. This takes a longer time, because people will wait at each step, if
there is any difference in task completion time between people. The length of
each stage is the maximum of each individual task completion time.

The critical-path approach would be to send A to wood store. A returns and
starts cutting leg 1, not waiting on B to return. B starts sanding the leg 1
completed by A, while A starts cutting the next leg, 2. C starts by finishing
leg 1 after B finished sanding, while A starts cutting leg 3, and B starts
sanding leg 2. Near the end, A has finished cutting the chair back, and goes
to the hardware store to buy the screws and glue. A returns and starts
assembling the chair as the pieces become ready.

Note how much earlier all the wood was cut in the naive approach. This is
"early starting". In the critical-path approach, the cutting of each piece by
A was delayed until it was needed by B for sanding. Buying the screws and glue
was delayed until much later, when they were finally needed for assembly. That
is because the critical path is:

(Buy Wood) -> (All Parts Are Finished) -> (Assemble Chair)

Other tasks can be delayed as appropriate, when doing so allows more resources
to be spent on the critical path. I.e., wait until you are almost ready to
assemble the chair before you buy the screws and glue, as time is better spent
on getting those pieces finished!

I hope that makes sense.

------
tajen
A story split in 37 tweets. Are some clients supposed to display that better
than 1/, 2/ etc? What happened with Twitter's experiment with the 10,000
characters limit?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10844306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10844306)

~~~
frostmatthew
> A story split in 37 tweets

I don't understand why people do this instead of just writing a blog post and
tweeting a link to _that_.

~~~
pavlov
Writing it inside Twitter means people can't share/like [retweet/favorite] the
whole thing, but instead readers will pick specific parts they find most
interesting. This gives the author more finely grained data about which
sentences hit the mark for their audience.

~~~
eyelidlessness
Some sites (Medium comes to mind) allow readers to "highlight" sections, and
even expose some threshold of those "highlights" to other readers. It may be
that that feature isn't used enough to give authors much data, but I also
wonder how much people use Twitter the way you describe.

------
woliveirajr
Someone taught me, years ago, some technique (don't remember the name) where
you would move all the tasks to begin in the last possible day.

Then, study the critical path to exclude all those "extra fat" that everybody
includes in each task, assuring that the critical path is really critical,
without hiding days/hours that would lead to procrastination in the critical
path. Save it to an "emergency buffer".

Review if something else became the critical path. Repeat until stability
arises.

Now, manage it, use your buffer when required, always take care if something
else becomes the critical path (as everything will begin in the last possible
time).

And, even if something becomes critical path and takes more time than
required, you have some buffer...

~~~
asplake
Reminds me of Goldratt's Critical Chain - he of Theory of Constraints (TOC),
The Goal, etc

~~~
kesor
Reminds? It is a direct quote of Critical Chain, see #37

------
SZJX
Well yeah of course this is one way of thinking, in that if you could use the
early times to do something else meaningful then why not, instead of wasting
all of the time on that one single thing which might not be improved that much
by all the additional time. That's true to an extent. A good example I can
think of is the exam preparation for university entrance exams in China. It's
a common practice by high schools to dedicate all three years to it at the
expense of other useful developmental activities for students, which is an
absolute waste. Just at most one year is totally enough, as proven by some
alternative high schools.

However, I'd still argue that the problem of most people/individuals
(especially as contrasted to huge organizations with loads of formal
methodologies) is still delaying/procrastinating too much instead of too
little. Too much pressure sucks, so is a rushed product/result compared with a
carefully prepared one. So no, unless you really know very clearly what you're
doing and how your plan will work out, which 99% of people have no clue about,
start as early as possible, much earlier than your estimate, otherwise you'll
definitely regret it. Though I acknowledge that this guy mostly talks about
management methods, not productivity for individual endeavors.

------
pretodor
Here is the full text:

1/ The key to finishing projects on time is to start every single step as late
as possible (exactly the opposite of what most PMs do)

2/ First, because only progress on the critical path matters for final
delivery, therefore all other starts are distractions

3/ It would be like spending hrs on a huge dinner prep by making all the side
dishes, only to realize u forgot to pre-heat oven

4/ Second, starting early doesn't mean you'll finish early. Parkinson's Law:
the task simply expands to fill the extra space

5/ Third, even if u do finish a step early, that gain will be wasted: next
person won't be ready

6/ Starting a step early actually has all sorts of negat conseq, which is why
procrastination is evolutionarily & logically a good strategy

7/ Starting early increases likelihood u don't have all info and prereqs,
making rework likely (i.e. estimate blowout)

8/ Starting early increases the surface area for interruption attacks
(internal & external), since u "have plenty of time"

9/ Starting early explodes the amt of lead time not spent actually working
(i.e. Touch time)

10/ 70-99% of task lead time is waiting time, queueing, pending confirmation,
waiting on approval, learning, rampup, setup, etc

11/ Ppl complain about estimation being hard, but it's not "uncertainty". It's
them starting things early due to supposed uncertainty!

12/ But maybe the worst effect of starting early is that ppl start late
anyway. Who actually begins a step before they have to?

13/ So you get worst of both worlds: a LONG plan with huge lead times, which
are ignored as ppl do everything last minute. Vicious cycle

14/Last reason early starts suck, is they give illusion of safety. But Murphy
doesn't hit everywhere evenly, he concentrates chaos at 1 spot

15/ Irony is this is self-reinforcing: did you hit the deadline because u
executed well, or because you had excessive safety (100-200%)?

16/ So person who adds the most excessive safety is rewarded for "hitting
their estimate," as if estimating and executing are independent

17/ Late starts fix all this: when the step is "released," they have barely
enough time to finish if they go at full speed

18/ This pressure helps them focus, get into flow, ignore
distractions/interruptions, optimize for 1 thing, get it done!

19/ Procrastination isn't an issue, because they're already behind, since u
also cut their estimated lead time in half (oops!)

20/ If they finish on time it's actually a cause for celebration, and the next
person can actually take advantage of the time gained

21/ The PM knows what to focus on, since u start with few steps (critical path
ones) and only gradually begin new ones as late as possible

22/ Another benefit: once crit path person passes hot potato, they're free! U
don't assign them new work, that would be punishing perform.

23/ Late starts also help with resource contentions (the same person doing 2
steps), esp important in cross-funct creative teams

24/ Instead of "start everything NOW!" You're saying "U must not start
anything until the last poss moment. Focus on the current task!"

25/ This helps ppl not multitask, since they only have one task at any given
time, and it's late!

26/ Ppl are generally happier: focus + flow + roadrunner mode (only 2 speeds,
100% & 0%) + fast results = happiness for both emp & co

27/ ANOTHER benefit of late starts: u have much better estimation data, since
lead time now more closely approximates touch time

28/ 3 main results of all this: throughout (output x sales) explodes, lead
time per project plummets, and huge excess capacity is revealed

29/ U read that right: earlier u start steps, the later u deliver projects,
the more excess capacity you're likely to have

30/ Why? Because the almost universal response to late projects is "we need
more capacity!" False. U need to use what u have

31/ The busier everyone in your co seems to be, the more confident I am that
you have tremendous, double-digit excess capacity

32/ To add insult to injury, emps in such companies also say they're "too busy
to invest in productivity." Speed up the hamster wheel!

33/ BUT to use late starts, u also need buffers. Bec some steps do in fact go
late, just not as many and not as late as u think

34/ And I don't mean buffers as a general concept, u need very precisely
placed and sized buffers divided into zones, updated daily

35/ There is a buffer for every purpose: project buffers, feeding buffers,
iteration buffers, bottleneck buffers. Gotta know which 1 to use

36/ The PM's job becomes easy: just watch the buffer penetrations. No need to
do anything until it gets to Zone 3 or 2, all else is noise

37/ If u want to know where all this comes from, Critical Chain Project Mgmt:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_managem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management)

~~~
raldi
And here it is reformatted into paragraphs:

The key to finishing projects on time is to start every single step as late as
possible (exactly the opposite of what most PMs do). First, because only
progress on the critical path matters for final delivery, therefore all other
starts are distractions. It would be like spending hrs on a huge dinner prep
by making all the side dishes, only to realize u forgot to pre-heat oven.

Second, starting early doesn't mean you'll finish early. Parkinson's Law: the
task simply expands to fill the extra space. Third, even if u do finish a step
early, that gain will be wasted: next person won't be ready. Starting a step
early actually has all sorts of negat conseq, which is why procrastination is
evolutionarily & logically a good strategy:

* Starting early increases likelihood u don't have all info and prereqs, making rework likely (i.e. estimate blowout)

* Starting early increases the surface area for interruption attacks (internal & external), since u "have plenty of time"

* Starting early explodes the amt of lead time not spent actually working (i.e. Touch time)

70-99% of task lead time is waiting time, queueing, pending confirmation,
waiting on approval, learning, rampup, setup, etc. Ppl complain about
estimation being hard, but it's not "uncertainty". It's them starting things
early due to supposed uncertainty! But maybe the worst effect of starting
early is that ppl start late anyway. Who actually begins a step before they
have to? So you get worst of both worlds: a LONG plan with huge lead times,
which are ignored as ppl do everything last minute. Vicious cycle.

Last reason early starts suck, is they give illusion of safety. But Murphy
doesn't hit everywhere evenly, he concentrates chaos at 1 spot. Irony is this
is self-reinforcing: did you hit the deadline because u executed well, or
because you had excessive safety (100-200%)? So person who adds the most
excessive safety is rewarded for "hitting their estimate," as if estimating
and executing are independent.

Late starts fix all this: when the step is "released," they have barely enough
time to finish if they go at full speed. This pressure helps them focus, get
into flow, ignore distractions/interruptions, optimize for 1 thing, get it
done!

Procrastination isn't an issue, because they're already behind, since u also
cut their estimated lead time in half (oops!). If they finish on time it's
actually a cause for celebration, and the next person can actually take
advantage of the time gained. The PM knows what to focus on, since u start
with few steps (critical path ones) and only gradually begin new ones as late
as possible.

Another benefit: once crit path person passes hot potato, they're free! U
don't assign them new work, that would be punishing perform. Late starts also
help with resource contentions (the same person doing 2 steps), esp important
in cross-funct creative teams. Instead of "start everything NOW!" You're
saying "U must not start anything until the last poss moment. Focus on the
current task!"

This helps ppl not multitask, since they only have one task at any given time,
and it's late! Ppl are generally happier: focus + flow + roadrunner mode (only
2 speeds, 100% & 0%) + fast results = happiness for both emp & co.

ANOTHER benefit of late starts: u have much better estimation data, since lead
time now more closely approximates touch time.

3 main results of all this: throughout (output x sales) explodes, lead time
per project plummets, and huge excess capacity is revealed. U read that right:
earlier u start steps, the later u deliver projects, the more excess capacity
you're likely to have. Why? Because the almost universal response to late
projects is "we need more capacity!" False. U need to use what u have. The
busier everyone in your co seems to be, the more confident I am that you have
tremendous, double-digit excess capacity.

To add insult to injury, emps in such companies also say they're "too busy to
invest in productivity." Speed up the hamster wheel! BUT to use late starts, u
also need buffers. Bec some steps do in fact go late, just not as many and not
as late as u think. And I don't mean buffers as a general concept, u need very
precisely placed and sized buffers divided into zones, updated daily. There is
a buffer for every purpose: project buffers, feeding buffers, iteration
buffers, bottleneck buffers. Gotta know which 1 to use. The PM's job becomes
easy: just watch the buffer penetrations. No need to do anything until it gets
to Zone 3 or 2, all else is noise 37/ If u want to know where all this comes
from, Critical Chain Project Mgmt:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_managem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management)

------
kesor
Actually the PM BOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) added Critical
Chain in the 5th edition (current one is 6th edition).

[https://4squareviews.com/2013/04/18/5th-edition-pmbok-
guide-...](https://4squareviews.com/2013/04/18/5th-edition-pmbok-guide-
chapter-6-critical-chain-method/)

------
zo7
Ah, so I guess he'd approve of the way I stumbled through university :)

I get what he's saying, but I can't imagine adhering strictly to this would be
healthy. I've waited until the last minute to finish enough projects to know
how stressful and anxiety-inducing it can be, and have enough experience to
know that my time estimates are never accurate.

~~~
SZJX
I think the caveat is obvious here, that this is a method that applies to
organizations with the help of a lot of formal methodologies, not individuals.
For individual endeavors, it's always the right idea to start as early as
possible, since without all the formal methodologies and structural control
your estimate will always be literal laughing stock. Starting at the last
moment is the absolute thing _not_ to do for an individual who has no clear
idea/experience about project management on her own(95% of people really). Not
to mention another issue deadly enough on its own is that there's simply
nobody supervising a hard deadline for your own projects, unlike within a
company structure. If you do so, just wait for series of trainwreck to happen
to you. I think this is proven by countless examples and experience already
and nobody would really object to that.

------
kesor
One amazing attempt to apply project management to software development can be
found in the work of Steve Tendon at
[http://chronologist.com/blog/2012-09-25/critical-chain-
proje...](http://chronologist.com/blog/2012-09-25/critical-chain-project-
management-in-TOC/)

------
kesor
I just wish more people would read Critical Chain books, there are several
very interesting books that discuss this technique - including some that were
released just last year.

amazon.com/dp/1934979074/

amazon.com/dp/1499660901/

amazon.com/dp/1498746039/

amazon.com/dp/0884271536/ \- the original book that started it all

------
realworldview
Twitter? Really?! I guess that fits with the overall _missive_.

~~~
tychoman
Well, 15m of tweeting on BART has led to dozens of high-value interactions,
new followers, and insights for the upcoming blog post. Not bad as a case
study!

