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

14.2. Making Adjustments

Tuesday night turned out to be a bad night all round. After I helped Natalie put Martha to bed, I returned home to find that Jake had some kind of coughing sickness of his own. The poor little guy couldn't stop hacking, and we ended up running the hot water in the shower to fill the bathroom up with steam, then Jenny and I took turns sitting with him in the steam bath until he finally fell asleep at about 3 a.m.

By 6:15 a.m. the next morning I was 2,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, collecting specimens of deep-sea plant life for the U.S. Oceanographic Survey. Suddenly an electronic beeper went off in my diving helmet, and I knew that I had less than six minutes of oxygen remaining. As I struggled for the surface I faced a terrible dilemma: come up too quickly and die from the rapid decompression, or drown on the ocean floor. I was paralyzed until a voice spoke to me. It said, "Turn the damn alarm off!"

By the time I got to work I was starting to wonder if maybe I shouldn't have just taken the day off. Luckily, there was a pick-meup waiting for me. It was the revised objective statement, signed by Ralph. He had attached a note asking me to bring him the schedule for the detailed design as soon as I had it.

I ended up leaving work at about three in the afternoon, but it was still a very productive day. I met with Ralph to present him with Sheila's Gantt chart (after she had lengthened the schedule to 12 weeks), and let himknow that he could expect ...