Audience

If you’re reading this, I assume you’re a software engineering manager. However, the overall content applies to all projects, and the hack applies to all projects in the context of a company.

What’s the Project Management Triangle?

For the purposes of this post, the project management triangle is an illustration of the tension between scope, schedule, and resources when executing a project. Let’s isolate each of the aspects and explain what happens as they increase:

• Scope: requires a longer schedule and/or resources.

• Schedule: can accommodate more scope and/or require fewer resources.

• Resources: the scope can be expanded and/or the schedule can be shortened.

You can read more here. Said another way:

Fast, good, and cheap. Choose two.

What Do Software Engineering Managers Do?

As a software engineering manager, you’re likely tasked with delivering projects on time (schedule), at an acceptable cost (resources), with sufficient quality (scope). Your most significant cost is probably personnel.

Too Many Projects

Unfortunately, you may find your team having too many projects (or parts of a project) to work on at once. Imagine you want to work on fewer projects at a time. You should explain that the additional projects put other projects at risk due to the split attention. Sometimes, your boss or stakeholders won’t accept that. This is where the hack comes in.

The Hack

Ask for more people by explaining what the people you have are doing and what additional people will do. Now, you may not actually want more people, but you may have better success with this request. Why might this request land better? Instead of saying some work will have to wait, which they don’t want, you’re proposing a solution that is their responsibility to fulfill. Remember, this isn’t your plan A. Plan A was asking to defer some project(s). This is Plan B. This will likely have one of two outcomes.

Outcome 1

This is the best case scenario: you don’t get more people. Now, your stakeholders clearly understand the capacity limitation. So, you come to an agreement to reduce the scope. Success!

Outcome 2

This is the worst case scenario: you get more people. You should be accepting of this since managers are often meant to grow their area, not just run it.

Summary

Hopefully, your team is working on just the right amount of projects. If you have too many, ask to defer (overall scope reduction or schedule growth) to ensure better delivery of the most important ones. If that doesn’t work, try the hack: ask for more people! Good luck, engineering manager!