This is Johanna Rothman's March 2026 Pragmatic Manager newsletter. The unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.
Most of us have heard of—or suffered through—schedule delays. That's when the project or program feels tremendous pressure to deliver some specific value by a specific date. To achieve those dates, we often heard lies such as, “You can get two of the three: quality, schedule, or features, but you can't get all three.”
That's a lie because the drivers, constraints, and floats create a pyramid, not a triangle. (I first wrote about this in Manage It! Your Guide to Pragmatic Project Management If this idea seems new to you, read Project Charter Part 2: Clarify the Project Driver, Boundaries, and Constraints for This Project for a more recent post.)
How do we get into these delays? Often, it's because we push-plan too much work into a project or a timebox. While this can occur in any lifecycle, I see this a lot in waterfall and too many “agile” approaches.
When we push work, we create the environment for schedule delays because that much work puts too much pressure on the team. That pressure prevents the team from thinking enough as they proceed. That lack of thinking prevents slack in the system and schedule advances. It also prevents the team and the organization from taking advantage of new opportunities. All because the team is so busy fulfilling its other commitments in too short a period of time.
Let me first explain what I mean by a schedule advance. Yes, it's the opposite of a schedule delay, but it has meaning.
What a Schedule Advance Means
A schedule advance occurs when the team finishes their deliverable before they expected to. If the team uses cycle time and a time-series graph, they might not finish anything before they expect to. Instead, they finish when they expect to. (See How to Move from Story Points and Magical Thinking to Cycle Time for Decisions for a time-series graph.)
However, the real issue is when the team finishes. The faster a team finishes a useful piece of work, the faster the product leaders can replan the backlog or the roadmap. And the faster the portfolio team can replan the portfolio. (See Multiple Short Feedback Loops Support Innovation for the three big feedback loops.)
Let's imagine the next MVP (Minimum Viable Product) requires five stories. The team's normal cycle time is two days. The team expects to finish that MVP in 10 days.
But what if the team finishes that MVP in 8 days? Or even 7 days? I'm talking about finishing, final MVP, no cruft, no leftover work. Really finishing.
Now, the team has a schedule advance of 10 days minus the time they took to finish. In this case, it's 2 or 3 days.
That's not a lot of time, but it might be enough to create a small experiment. Or start a spike to explain the next bit of work for the team.
Sometimes, that experiment or spike allows the product leader to change the product from the original product to a new product.
That's what happened to me this past week. All because I had slack time built into my schedule. That slack time allowed me to take advantage of my schedule advances to create a new opportunity.
Slack Can Create New Opportunities
You might have noticed the image at the top of this post has a new book cover. Yes, I am gathering my current writing secrets posts, plus a few more, into a new book, Nonfiction Writing Secrets. Why? because I want to offer this new book as an exclusive book to a Storybundle. (That bundle will have Effective Public Speaking and the Nonfiction Writing Secrets books.)
I could not do that if I push-planned all my work to the maximum of my ability. Instead, I can use continual planning to plan just enough for now and see where I want to go next.
You can, too.
Building slack into your schedule does not mean you are lazy—far from it. Instead, slack time means you are smart about your time, working at a sustainable pace to deliver value, day in and day out. I offer value in my writing, speaking, and consulting. You probably offer value for a product or an organization, depending on your role.
Push-planning, especially when it is past your capacity, means people tend to multitask and/or make mistakes under the plan's pressure. That often leads to schedule delays. Instead, consider how you can make schedule advances. Those advances build slack into everyone's schedule. And depending on how you work, that slack might offer everyone new opportunities.
I did not expect to write this book this year. I thought about it for next year. But the opportunity arose, and I am taking it.
You can, too, especially if you use continual planning.
Continual Planning Can Turn Schedule Delays into Schedule Advances
I hate schedule delays. Just hate them. I feel the pressure to finish “more,” even though I realize I am only human.
That's why I use “how little” for my plans. And the next project is always an option, not a defined guarantee. I want to make sure my next option is valuable for everyone.
See if you can look for schedule advances to build slack in your schedule. Measure cycle time to build those time-series graphs. Watch your flow metrics, so you can control the aging of all your work. And if you are a product leader or a manager, look for those schedule advances so you can take advantage of new opportunities.
Read More…
This newsletter touches on ideas in these books:
- Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
- Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
- Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility
- Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
- Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Cost or Schedule
Announcements
If you are part of the agile community, consider checking out The Enterprise Agility Network. Also, don’t miss out on discounted membership options. Use Discount Code: ROTHMANPMC33 to get 33% OFF all memberships.
Links of Interest
New to the newsletter? See previous issues. (I post these newsletters to my YouTube Channel a few days after I send them.)
Here are other links you might find useful:
- Managing Product Development Blog. (Yes, I offer an RSS feed so you can read everything in a newsreader.)
- Create an Adaptable Life Blog to see the weekly question of the week.
- My Books. You can also buy my self-published ebooks and audiobooks on my store.
- Johanna’s Fiction
- Tip Jar. (My newsletters will remain free. And I do want to offer you an option for you to show how much you value my work.)
Johanna
© 2026 Johanna Rothman
Pragmatic Manager: Vol 23, #3. ISSN: 2164-1196