Eating an Elephant

So, how do you eat an elephant? It’s simple, one bite at a time.
How do you finish complex and large projects? One step at a time… one “stage” at a time.

The fourth core principle is Manage by Stages.

Following the “manage by stages” principle, we break down large projects into smaller stages to create focus, and frequent sense of achievement for people involved in the project.

It’s also helpful from another angle: it’s not realistic to force ourselves to plan a large, complex project in detail at the outset. Instead, we create a high-level plan, and prepare the detail plan of each stage right before its start. It’s just more realistic. Does it remind you of Agile methods? You’re not alone in this.  

On the other hand, “mange by stages” help us set up different controls for each stage. The end of each stage is also a good time for evaluating the performance, and updating and checking the business case (justification) to see if we’re going in the right direction.

Alright, enough with the elephant for now. What do you think about delegation? What’s the problem when managers do not delegate? What’s the problem when they do delegate? Think about it until tomorrow, when we discuss the fifth core principle.