Came across great execution: balancing order and chaos blog post by Mike Abbott on uncapitilized.com. In particular the following quote
If the environment at a startup isn’t crazy, then something’s wrong.
This reminds me of an adage that I use fairly often.
If you aren’t yellow, you aren’t pushing hard enough.
For those unfamiliar with the Red/Yellow/Green (RYG)status colors, otherwise known as the Traffic Light Rating System (apologies for the British-isms in the wikipedia article), which is commonly used in project management to rate the status of a project. Very quickly, here are some broad guidelines on what RYG means..
GreenProject in great shape, no issues, no concerning risks
| Red | Project in troubled state, needs help, impactful risks realized, late, overbudget |
|---|---|
| Yellow | Project in okay to not-so-bad state, some issues, some risks, needs care and feeding, might become late, might go over budget |
| Green | Project in great shape, no issues, no meaningful risks, no concerns… All good! |
Quite often, project go through their lifecycle going something like the following…
Green, Green, Green, Green, …, Green, Yellow, Red
The optimistic behavior isn’t usually intended, it is human nature to assume that issues are under control, unknowns can be ignored, risks are mitigated and under control. It’s only at crunch time close to the end when integration is occurring, latent issues or risks are discovered that a project moves to yellow. Since they collapse on top of each other, the project quickly goes from yellow to red. Project resets occur, scope is thrown out the window, crap products ship…
Realistically, a good project will ferret out risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies early on in the project. If after a thorough analysis, the project would generally be yellow.
If the project is still green, the project is a slam dunk. If you think it’s a slam dunk, then the team can push harder. Pushing harder brings in some yellow through any of the RAID items above, but they also bring in an element of chaos that Mike talks about in his blog.
Thoughts, comments, counterviews?
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