Collective Wisdom from the Experts 173
Developers need to know the business rules, the business champion needs to
know the status of the deliverables, and various other people need insight into
where the project stands in relation to its schedule, cost, and quality metrics.
As this amount of information grows, so does the likelihood that a non-
omnipotent PM will miscommunicate. The Scrambler has struck! For example,
a business rule that appears to have little impact on the project on the surface
may in fact be a major roadblock once its true intent is discovered. Sizable
changes to the code base may need to be done in order to repair the damages.
A project manager needs to get the right stakeholders together to talk about
the right topic at the right time. Finding a time to have people from disparate
departments available to meet may seem daunting. The practice? The PM, try-
ing to solve a scheduling issue says, “Cheri, I’ll take this directly to Bob, and get
back to you with the answer.” This can work for short, nontechnical questions.
But, be aware that success in small ventures can insidiously evolve you into a
Messenger or a Scrambler. Invariably something is missed in the translation,
leading to excessive wasted time spent trying to sort out the repercussions.
Providing clear, open channels for communication, along with archiving dis-
cussions and decisions, allows all team members to interact directly with one
another. This keeps The Messenger and The Scrambler project manager at bay,
and keeps the software project moving forward.