Without exception all discussions that identify discrepancies to be resolved, insights to be acted upon, or questions to be answered, result in the creation of an action, and an action has an owner and a due date by which it will be completed. Due dates, unless explicitly agreed otherwise, are final dates, not dates for the delivery of draft conclusions for discussion. And the same applies to any other form of commitment for the delivery of epics, projects, etc. If the resolution of a commitment is going to take multiple iterations and conversations then the owner of that commitment must plan accordingly to make sure they are complete in advance of the date by when the deliverable was committed to be closed.
All commitments identified within a team are collated in one agreed to repository and not maintained across multiple documents, spreadsheets or other systems.
For us to achieve our goals we have to be able to predict the results of our efforts so that we can efficiently commit resources when and where needed. Which means we have to be able to deliver as promised. If a commitment date will be missed the miss must be communicated at least one week in advance so all affected can adjust and plan accordingly.
Every time we miss a commitment we have an opportunity to learn what caused it to be missed, how we can correct it moving forward, and how we can check in, followup, to make sure that correction is working. Every missed deliverable is a learning opportunity. And as always, we want what we have learned from this missed commitment to be transparently shared so that all of us can learn from each other, and not repeat similar mistakes.
Therefore, if a date is missed, any date regardless of advance notice or not, the person accountable must deliver Situation, Cause, Correction and Follow Up analysis on or before end of day on that missed date.
If you, or your Team miss a date, on the day that date is moving publish in your Team’s Slack channel, what is moving, what the impact of this delay is on your other commitments, and as such what other dates need to be moved, what caused the missed commitment, what you have learned from this, and from that learning how you are going to correct moving forward. And to follow up on the missed commitment keep a Date Score. If this is your first slipped date your score is 1/3. If it is your fourth, your score is 4/3 and and if you hit this mark spend time at your next one-on-one with your Team Lead to understand why this pattern is repeating and what needs to be done to correct it.
For greater certainty your Slack Channel post needs to include;
- Commitment Description / Expected Date / Revised Date
- Cascading impact on other commitments, if any;
- Commitment Description / Expected Date / Revised Date
- Commitment Description / Expected Date / Revised Date
- ...
- Cause? Why did you miss your commitment?
- Correction? What you learned and what you will apply moving forward to to eliminate missed commitments.
- Missed Commitment Score; X / 3
Missed dates are a learning opportunity to figure out how we work better, together, moving forward. Let’s use them as such.