This is unacceptable

(Writing for 30th Jan)

This is unacceptable ! How could you do this. Matthew was on top of his voice shouting at Martin. A minute before Martin broke the news that the project cannot be delivered on time as per the plan as there are certain challenges and the testing for the code build could not be completed. All hell broke loose for Matthew and he was shouting and saying “This is unacceptable”.

Martin was politely replying and mentioning the reasons for the delay in the start of the testing. The resource challenges, the environment challenges etc. He mentioned that this has already happened, so how can this be unacceptable. You have to accept what has happened, then we can sit together to assess what could be done from here to bring the project back to green. But Matthew was furious and he was again and again coming to the same point. As per the project plan, the testing should have been completed by this time and you are mentioning the testing hasn’t started. Again Martin heard the same three words “This is unacceptable”.

In any bad situation or event which has already happened, we find it very difficult to accept the event. If we do not accept the present situation, how could we progress. We will be stuck in questioning why it has happened and blaming each other. It is good to understand why that has happened to learn from it, but not for blaming and going deep into it and not accepting the situation. The project plan is a plan. There is no guarantee that the project will be delivered as per the plan. It has to be re-planned. Even after re-planning, many projects fail to deliver.

Rather than saying, This is unacceptable, we should accept it because it has already happened. Retrospect and learn from it. And Move on.