Plan For The Expected Exception

After a year or two working at a company, you begin to have a good understanding of the flow of a project. You begin to understand what typically goes wrong and what doesn’t. As managers and developers, it is our jobs to optimize the flow and massage out any kinks in the process.

One of the best ways to do this is plan for the expected problems that you cannot change. Examples of these kinds of problems could include clients or other internal groups not meeting their commitments, a boss or executive overriding your typical process or any other general occurrence where you do not have the control to make the decision.

Make note of these different “expected exceptions” and build processes around how to handle them. A well thought out processes can reduce the work required to manage the exception. Ideally, the process will require little to no input from you.

The end goal of your process should be to enable those under you to come to what you find to be an acceptable solution to the expected problem without having to escalate to you or anyone else.