Chapter 6 Flashcards — Why Have We Stopped?
flashcards tsep unblocking escalation project-management definition-of-done
What are the four universal unblocking techniques?
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- Understand and explain — debug what’s happening and make sure everyone has the same understanding
- Make the work easier — reduce what other people need to do; remove friction; do some of the work for them
- Get organizational support — demonstrate value to get priority; escalate constructively (facts, not complaints)
- Make alternative plans — accept the blockage and find a different way to succeed; adjust scope, timing, or approach
What are the three root causes when another team isn’t delivering what you need?
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- Misunderstanding — the team doesn’t know there’s a deadline, a dependency, or exactly what’s needed
- Misadventure — life happened: someone left, the team is overloaded, they have their own downstream block
- Misalignment — your project is lower on their priority list than their own work, even if it’s high on yours
What is the key insight about “single button click” blockages (approvals, config changes, etc.)?
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What looks like “10 minutes of work” from your perspective looks very different from theirs: they have many such requests, they may accept accountability when they approve, they need lead time to batch similar changes, and your urgency is typically the result of your planning failure, not theirs. The lesson: “Lack of planning on your part is not an emergency on mine.” Approach with apology, not frustration.
What is a “rollup” and when is it useful?
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A rollup is a concise summary that aggregates all scattered information on a topic in one place, including explicit conclusions that nobody has yet stated. Useful when work is blocked by unassigned ownership or when there’s lots of backstory and several narrative threads. Value: aggregating facts surfaces new interpretations (A said X, B said Y → therefore Z, which nobody had explicitly stated) and gives everyone an opportunity to react and course-correct.
What is the key insight about organizationally blocked work (unassigned work)?
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Unassigned work is an organizational problem, not a technical one. More designs, planning, and technical cleverness don’t help until someone actually owns the work. The “impassable ridge” on the treasure map is the lack of staffing, not the technical challenge. You can’t route around the organizational gap with technical effort; you must solve it by advocating for an owning team.
What is the “Beware of Leopard” pattern?
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Solutions that exist but are impossible to discover — named after a Douglas Adams quote about plans hidden in a locked cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign saying “Beware of the Leopard.” These projects complete the documentation milestone (the information exists somewhere) but users can never find them through normal search or navigation. The fix is active marketing: tell people repeatedly, link from everywhere they’ll look, use shortlinks for all plausible names.
What does Heidi Waterhouse’s insight “nobody wants to use software” mean for project leaders?
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“Nobody wants to use software. They want to catch a Pokémon.” Users don’t care about the code — they care about the outcome the software enables. If they can achieve the outcome, the software may as well not exist. This means “code complete” is not done; done means users can successfully achieve what they came to do. Reframe: celebrate landings (users using it), not launches (code merged).
What is the sunk cost fallacy in the context of project decisions?
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The tendency to continue a failing project because of prior investment in time, money, or energy — even when stopping would be the better decision. “We’ve already spent six months on this” is not a reason to spend six more months. Without highly tuned sunk-cost awareness, you stay on the wrong path indefinitely. The healthy response to a doomed project: stop, document what happened, share what you learned. Stopping is not failure; pushing on after you know it can’t work is.
What are the four legitimate ways for a project to end deliberately?
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- Done enough — project has reached diminishing returns; declare success, confirm no unhappy customers, move on
- Wrong journey — the project cannot achieve its goal; stop early, avoid sunk cost, write a retrospective
- Canceled — organizational decision; acknowledge feelings, communicate directly to team (never via gossip mill), clean up properly, support team members’ transitions
- Victory — actual completion; double-check measurable goals are met and users are happy, then celebrate with recognition of the team’s work