Pushing Is Not Managing

A large multi-hundred-million dollar program, dangerously close to its deadline, is experiencing significant problems.

The final stages of testing reveals a large number of unexpected problems, building a mass of evidence that the product is not ready.  This is an unwelcome threat to the much publicised, long promised completion date.

What is the reaction of management?  Put pressure on those under them, as if the already stressed out workers will work better and more productively by application of pressure.  (If that were the case, then why not put more pressure at the beginning of the project, the middle... In fact, why let up pressure at all?)

Pressure shows up in the imposition of targets: You must deliver X number of tests per day! You must fix N number of defects fixed per day!

Incompetent managers have no conception that a process can only  sustain what it can sustain.  You cannot demand that a 3-lane highway accommodate 5 lines of cars.  Try to do so, and you get a mess.  And to fix that mess, you don’t try to ram even more cars. 

If a process cannot sustain a manager's demands, something will give.  The first casualty of pressure will be openness.  Fear will begin to creep and spread like an invisible fog in the project.  Fear leads to lies.  People will lie to save themselves, including from unreasonable demands.  Lies take the place of truth.  With truth gone, you cannot acquire facts.  Without facts, you lose control. Without control, you cannot manage. 

The managers will get their X number of tests, but they will be rushed and dubious quality.  They will get their N number of defects will be fixed. Some of the defects will suddenly become no longer defects. Some will be fixed  with duct tape mentality.

The manager will get the  numbers they want; these will have little resemblance to reality.  But maybe that's fine.  Maybe all that's needed is to maintain a semblance of success, just enough to get kudos and rewards for a job well done. 

There's always firefighters to put out the later problems.  But pity the people whose money is being burned up.  Pity the truth.