We had a meeting the following day, just to start develop the rolling wave schedule. I posted the months on stickies across the top of the wall, along with the known major milestones, such as internal demo, initial customer demo, and customer release, under their correct months. I listed the features down the side on a piece of flip-chart paper, in the order the developers told me they were going to implement them.

I asked, "What will it take us to get to these first two features?"

Dan replied, "No, JR, we're working in parallel. That's the wrong question. The real question is who will do what when?"

"OK, as long as we don't plan the whole darn project at once. The idea of doing this on stickies is to make sure we can figure out a Plan B if this plan doesn't work. Remember, when you write your tasks on stickies, make the tasks as small as possible."

Everyone wrote his tasks on stickies. Most of the tasks were one or two weeks long.

"OK, guys, I'm in trouble now."

"Why?"

"Because I am not going to know for too long if anyone is in trouble. Neither will you. You have to make smaller tasks. I bet each of you does something every day, right?"

Heads nodded.

"OK, then write all those things down, just for this first week. If you know enough about the second week, add that, too."

After they'd revised their first two weeks of stickies, I explained, "OK, I'm not going to ask you every day what you're doing. You're going to tell me if you don't make the progress you think you're going to make. If you know why, tell me that, too. Some tasks you'll finish on time, some might be early, and some might be late. My job is to figure out if you're late on a task how that matters to the rest of the team and the project. If it's a systemic problem, we'll address it in a group meeting. If not, the two of us will discuss it.

"I won't bug you for status. You'll email me status on Friday mornings, and we'll have one-on-ones on Tuesdays. That way I know if I need to do something a couple of times every week. OK?"

Sam frowned, looking concerned. "Johanna, this seems like a lot of work for us. At least for me. Do I really have to break down all my tasks into small pieces for the rest of the project?"

"I don't know how to effectively manage this project given the tight schedule and technical risks. Do you have a better idea?"

"No."

"Well, try it for two weeks and we'll see how intrusive it is. If it takes too much time or you think it's a waste of time, we'll address it at a weekly team meeting. But this has worked for me before. You need to plan only the next two to three weeks in detail. Not any more than that."