Anyone who’s ever worked on a team knows that every project is a series of hurdles. Although some of the hurdles are foreseeable, the vast majority of them are not. Good teams use planning, adaptation, and delegation to attack issues together. If working effectively, a team can turn even the most difficult project into a series of tiny victories, and end with a successful product.

I believe a great time to judge a team and a project is the last minute. The hours right before a deadline can say quite a bit about project management, the company, and the team.

Pace and the Traditional Story Arch

I can get frustrated when I work. I find it uncomfortable to work through puzzles because I want resolution. But I like problem solving. I find it satisfying to work toward an end result, and I like working with people with different skill sets to figure things out. I’ve recognized it’s a part of my process, and I know other people do it too. (For example, any man building a shelf with his significant other watching.)

I know my process, and I know how to manage it based on the time I have and the work I’m doing. The same could be said of any creative worth his or her salt. It takes some coaxing for one to enter Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow, and we all have our own little tricks—warming the bath water, dangling a carrot, pouring a glass of wine.

I tend to imagine the process in terms of a traditional story arch. (That also resembles a great drive off a golf tee.) Here’s an illustration:

Plot structures are very relatable to project management. Good writing usually involves deliberate pacing that allow their plots to unfold organically. Pacing is extremely important to the rising action in particular. The rising action is like a mountain path. Just as mountain climbers need pauses and snack breaks, readers need breaks in the tension. These breaks allow readers to make it through the book. Without them, the readers will burn out mid-read.

In a similar way, work teams need pauses to reflect, discuss, adjust, and better their work. Pauses in tension and work allow them to adapt to hit their goals. As I mentioned earlier, I think that projects are actually a series of hurdles, and each hurdle can be informative. The story-arch model is a great overview, but I think it’s important to note that if you were drawing it in more detail, it actually would look more like this:

This is important because of a common issue in project management: underestimation at the onset. Managers fail to gauge how long the project will take, and how much work is involved. Later, when the project is faced with the unforeseen hurdles mentioned earlier—and it’s apparent the project timeline was misjudged—project managers are faced with a difficult act of prioritization. In times of crisis, the priority system likely defaults to:

1. Hitting the deadline. First and foremost, the project must ship or launch. The (often completely arbitrary) deadline is our first priority.

2. Delivering project specs. These are important, but if necessary, we will put individual specs on the chopping block to hit our deadline.

3. Protecting the team. We want the team to be happy, but the team gets paid for this. It’s all part of the job.

At these points, the deadline, which was initially proposed to ensure efficiency and focus energy, takes precedence. The underestimation trickles down the line, and the stress load ends up squarely on the team. In essence, the team is punished for someone else’s mistake.

Adjustments to the Arch

The key for great projects and great work is focusing on that little red star, the climax. In the traditional story arch, the climax is the pinnacle, the highest point of the action. It’s the mountaintop, when the mountain climber’s only option is climbing back down.

In project management, I think the climax should be when the work hits 99% complete. To explain why, let’s revisit our arch, which is somewhat flexible to match timeframes. In fact, a lot of creatives understand that shortening the timeline can sometimes increase focus. Sometimes, they procrastinate to force the issue. (Although, some procrastinate because of bad habits.) Anyway, the arch can compress if required, like this:

However, it doesn’t take as well to other adjustments, which is essentially what happens in bad project management. There are two common scenarios that happen in this vein. The first involves confusing the deadline with the climax. In this scenario, the delivered product is the end of the process. In essence, the latter part of the arch is snipped, like so:

The above scenario offers no falling action, or no resolution. There’s no cooldown, which is an extremely important part of the entire process. The project is essentially devoid of latter insights, discussion, and improvements.

The next scenario involves pushing the climax closer to the deadline, which essentially has the same results as the first scenario.

The dotted red line above illustrates this push. In this scenario, project managers are buying time from themselves. As they push the climax closer to the deadline, they shrink the latter part of the arch, leaving little time for processing and improvement. However, take note of the dotted green line. You can move the 99% mark earlier in the plan without any negative repercussions, and you’ll give the team more time to revisit the work before the project ships.

The Last Minute: Denouement

When a project is mismanaged, the last minute can be a horrible time. Rather than being 99% of the way to completion, the team can feel like it’s only accomplished a small percentage of the work. In those cases, the product is unrecognizable from the one outlined in the project scope.

You can judge a good team and a good project manager by checking on them right before their deadline. Are they panicking or polishing up the details? Are they more than 99% of the way there?

Whether you’re a creator-of-things, or a project manager, or a team member, it’s important to understand process and pace. Before, I noted that in times of crisis, project managers can order their priorities like this:

1. Hitting the deadline. First and foremost, the project must ship or launch. The (often completely arbitrary) deadline is our first priority.

2. Delivering project specs. These are important, but if necessary, we will put individual specs on the chopping block to hit our deadline.

3. Protecting the team. We want the team to be happy, but the team gets paid for this. It’s all part of the job.

Think if the priorities were reversed.

1. Protecting the team. We want the team to be happy and stay together.

2. Delivering project specs. We’ll space these out so this project is a hit.

3. Hitting the deadline. We’ll set this for when we can safely deliver.

The fact is, a happy team, with a solid process and plan, can deliver specs on time. And everyone can be happier over the course of the process. A constant scramble, and a habit of jettisoning specs to hit too-tight deadlines, can burn people out. The opposite can keep teams together and result in better projects and products.

One last thing. The traditional plot arch includes the “denouement,” or the resolution. In French, the word essentially means “untying,” implying that the plot, which has been entangled in conflict and action, becomes unraveled at the end of the story. The knots are undone, the conflicts are resolved, and the story is over. No more conflicts exist on the horizon, and the audience can go home satisfied, victorious.

Photo: Kodak Timer by Telstar Logistics / Flickr