Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management

Chapter 18. Finding and Fixing Mistakes

"Daddy, why is your smile turned down all the time?"

Jake was really starting to talk a lot now but how do you explain to your almost three year old kid that your damn execution plan is screwed up because all the resources are overloaded, the cost is about $1 million more than your original estimate, and the thing won't finish untilNovember, fivemonths late? I guess the answer is, you don't.

"Daddy has a lot on his mind right now, Jake, and sometimes all of this thinking makes my head hurt."

"Play with me and it makes your head better, Daddy."

"Okay, Jake, what do you want to play with?"

"My blocks!"What else. His great grandmother, none other than Martha herself, had given him blocks for Christmas and ever since he has used all of his spare time—something you have a lot of when you're three—building things with those blocks.

As Jake laid his blocks out on the floor and got ready to create another skyscraper, I pondered my situation and prepared to assist him. Okay, I admit, the blocks are fun. It had only been a day since the high of completing our execution plan. At that point, everything had seemed under control.

But this morning, Amanda and I had come into work to put the plan into the project management software.We had both planned on spending no more than a couple of hours getting it set up. At six in the evening our difficulties still weren't resolved.

The problem was that the program was telling us things we didn't want to hear. ...