Are Your Pants on Fire, or Do You Suffer from Split Focus?
Are Your Pants on Fire, or Do You Suffer from Split Focus?
Some schedule games—Split Focus and Pants on Fire—are the result of your management not making certain decisions about the project portfolio. Without those decisions, your project has problems. In this column, Johanna Rothman explains what you can do when the problems on your project are caused by your management’s lack of decision making.
Imagine you're working on or managing a project. You're dealing with risks and making technical decisions--pretty much humming along. The project isn't easy, but you're making progress. One day, you arrive at work and your boss says, "Stop working on that project. Work on this one instead." You do. A week later, the same thing happens--you stop working on the second project and move on to the third. Welcome to the Pants on Fire schedule game.
Pants on Fire is bad enough, but some managers don't even let you work on just one project at a time.
