How An Expedite Request Sunk the Titanic. Dan Vacanti

Most people know that RMS Titanic was a British passenger ship that struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic on the morning of April 15, 1912 resulting in the loss of over 1,500 lives. What most people don’t know, however, is that during the final stages of construction of Titanic, an expedite request caused a delay in completion and triggered a chain of events that directly led to the sinking of the ill-fated vessel. If this sounds all too familiar, that’s because delays due to expedite requests are sinking your process as well. This talk will be an exploration of how disruptive interrupt requests—like expedites—can be to the normal flow of development work. Most people see these interrupts as innocuous, status quo, or even a necessary part of the product development process. Few people realize how negatively impactful these disruptions can be. In fact, for most teams, these interrupts are the number one cause for unpredictability. Using the Titanic disaster as a backdrop, this presentation will look at the negative consequences of expedite work. It will explore objective data from real teams that demonstrates how expedites actually make things take more time—not less—to complete. Chances are you have always intuitively known that interrupts are what makes your process unpredictable. This talk will give you to tools you need to quantify that impact and give you strategies on how minimize their negative effects.