You Should Learn How to Manage by Exception

In this week's episode, Ricardo discusses one of the critical principles of the PRINCE2 method: the management by exception.

Managing by exception is a key pillar to save time and the overload of communications by setting boundaries of action and escalating issues. This principle is useful in every type of project and every method.

Listen to the episode to learn more about avoiding unnecessary reporting and communication, empowering your teams to manage their work boundaries and keeping your focus on exceptions.

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Episode transcript

The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.

Ricardo (4s):
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes podcast. Today I like to discuss management by exception. And I remember very clearly when I was studying around 10 years ago for the Prince to credential. And one of the principles of brings is management by exception. And this became, since that time, an extremely relevant topic for me in my day to day work and why this is so important because today what we see is it's an absolutely overload of information, decision meetings. So we have meetings all the time. In many of them, they are just routine meetings.

Ricardo (43s):
They are not to handle any exceptions. So for example, you do a weekly project check-out and then everybody sits and say, how's your area? Good? How's your area? Good? How's your area? Good. And after half an hour, everybody leaves you produce an agenda. You produce everything, all the documentation, just to say, it's all good. You know, it's not the best use of people's time. So what is the management by exception? It's you only call for meetings, reports, information exchange, if there reason exception. So there is a trust between the workers and they do not raise any issue, unless it's an exception.

Ricardo (1m 28s):
So what happens? You put boundaries. So let me give you an example in a very simple way you have between two and four days to do a job. Okay? And you are working on that. So if you do it in two, if you're doing and forecasting it in two or two and a half or three or three and a half, you don't report to anyone. You don't raise a flag and say, look, problem, problem. I'm no, you only raise a flag if you reach and surpass four days, because there is a boundary where you is suppose you are the owner of that management means you will put in place everything you can to keep that, that line inside that boundary.

Ricardo (2m 13s):
If for any reason, you are not able to do that, then it's the time for you to escalate. Then you escalate to a different level that will be able to manage that exception. So you will trigger that only if something that is out of your control zone. So in these is incredible. How does this can be useful because you can create a set of triggers and then you will not have this overload of report. For example, if in one week, everything is doing fine, then you don't need to do anything. You don't need. You just keep going. And this is the magic for me of management by exception. And these can be worked because it's not because I started saying that these was part of Prince two, that you should, this only, we're pretty too.

Ricardo (3m 0s):
You can use this with anything. You can use this with a jail. You know, I don't want to be, I don't like very much this. I would say sacred approach. Like for example, I need to do the daily scrum everyday. You know, if everything is doing perfect, everything, there was no, except there is nothing. Everybody knows what to do. Wow. You should do that. I know people say, Oh no, because this is the root of scrap. Okay. I respect that. But this is what I want you to think about. So management by exception, the issue will only trigger things. If you see a red light, okay? If you see, and of course, what is important, if you have a very big and wide boundary, Oh, then you will not have too many exceptions.

Ricardo (3m 47s):
If I tell you, you can do that between one day and a hundred days, then you know, if it's 20, 30, 40, you are telling me that I don't care. I care only fit some, both a hundred. But if you tell me that your boundary is between one day and 1.1 day, then it's a very different thing. Remember, every time that you have a very limited arrange, you will have far more exception. So these is the magic of management by exception. So how wide should be my range that I can empower my team, that I can empower the results, reduce overload without losing control of everything.

Ricardo (4m 29s):
And this is the magic and the challenge of management by et cetera. Remember everything that goes to an exception has an overhead cost because someone will have to prepare a report. Someone has to analyze the reports. Someone has to sit and decide on that. So remember this because many people think that, okay, I'm building a software arm, I'm building a house. And you think that just the software, just the coders or the testers or the people and the software and the hardware engage it on that. It's not every single time you stand up to do a daily scrub. These is costs. These costs every time you see to do a weekly report or to update your scalp.

Ricardo (5m 13s):
So if you're using a waterfall system, yeah, this is time. This is time in, this is overhead time. So management by exception is a way of reducing this and focus on what really matters. What are the critical topics you need to take care to move forward? So this is for me, one of the key things I learned in this 10 years, and I wanted to share with you. So take a look on that management by exception. I hope you enjoy this podcast. See you next week with another five minutes podcast.

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