Back in No More Watermelon Status Reports: How to Use Stories to Explain Project State, a reader asked how to help management understand why an estimated duration was “so long.”

The answer is that the manager is playing the “Bring Me a Rock” schedule game. That’s when the manager wants the project manager or the people doing the work to reduce their estimate durations.

The Bring Me a Rock schedule games tend to occur under these conditions:

• When people estimate alone and you, the project manager, rolls up the estimate.
• Even when teams estimate, if the people know they will work alone, they tend to add buffer time to their estimates.
• When your manager wants to see a Gantt Chart and pick out certain tasks or people for more detailed understanding.

Bring Me a Rock occurs when a more senior person tries to pressure a less senior person into changing the original estimate.

If people estimate or work alone, the project manager is much more susceptible to pressure from senior leaders.

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