It's hard to do the risky tasks first!

One of the challenging practices for project planning is to place the riskiest tasks as early in the project as possible. This maximizes the time available to recover if there are unexpected issues. So why is it hard? Plenty of reasons.

First, everyone wants a demo. Often the riskiest tasks are buried in the heart of the system and are not the sexy-looking features that everyone wants to demo. Design areas high in criticality and low in demo value include: hot backup, failover, power systems, maximum stress networks, and mechanical integrity. We like to isolate the developers working on high risk tasks and ask other people to build demos.

Second, human nature drives us to do some easy things so we feel a sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, some of those easy tasks may have to be reworked as the complicated tasks are completed, potentially impacting project cost and schedule. We believe it is the responsibility of the product development leader to keep the team focused on the priorities.

Third, wait for “Pat”. Pat is the key resource person that “always” works on this stuff and therefore is the only person that understands how to make it work. If Pat’s other project slips, that delay rolls right into your project. We like to have another developer start the task with some informal consulting from Pat, working until Pat is available. They will certainly make less progress than Pat, but this approach accomplishes two goals: progress is made, and training starts on a backup for Pat.

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