So, let me tell you about this one time things got seriously out of hand, what I kinda call the ‘imoderate’ phase of a project I was working on a while back. It started simple enough, like most things do, right? Just a small task, add a little feature here, tweak something there.
Things Started Snowballing
But then, man, it started growing. Like, really growing. Every meeting, someone had a ‘bright idea’. “Oh, can we also add this?” “Wouldn’t it be cool if it did that?” Suddenly, this little task wasn’t so little anymore. It felt like we were trying to boil the ocean. The requests were just pouring in, totally immoderate, no sense of priority, no sense of what was actually possible with the time we had. It was getting messy.
I remember feeling swamped. You know that feeling? Like you’re just treading water, and more keeps getting piled on top. The initial plan was out the window. We were just reacting, chasing every shiny new request. It wasn’t sustainable, and frankly, the quality of what we were managing to get done was starting to suffer.
Trying to Grab the Reins
I knew I had to do something. Complaining wasn’t really getting anywhere. So, I decided to get practical, real hands-on about showing what was happening. Here’s what I did:
- Started logging everything: Every single request, big or small, I wrote it down. Who asked for it, when, what exactly it was. No more ‘oh, someone mentioned maybe we should…’ Nope. If it wasn’t written down, it didn’t exist for planning.
- Made it visible: I grabbed a big whiteboard (okay, it was virtual, but same idea) and listed everything out. All the current tasks, all the new ‘ideas’. Just seeing the sheer length of that list was an eye-opener for some folks.
- Forced the priority talk: With the list visible, I started pushing back, gently at first. “Okay, we have 50 things here. We can realistically do maybe 5 this week. Which ones are they?” Forced people to actually choose.
- Pushed for ‘phases’: Instead of one giant ‘immoderate’ release, I argued for breaking it down. “Let’s get this core part working first, then we can talk about adding the bells and whistles later.”
It wasn’t easy, believe me. Some people didn’t like being told ‘no’ or ‘not now’. There were arguments, debates. But having that documented list, that visual proof of the craziness, was my main weapon. It wasn’t just my opinion anymore; it was facts.
Getting Back to Moderate
Slowly, very slowly, things started to calm down. Seeing the scale of the requests laid bare made everyone pause a bit. We started having actual conversations about priorities, about what was truly important versus just ‘nice to have’. The pace became less frantic, more… well, moderate.
We didn’t build everything that was initially thrown onto the pile, not even close. But what we did build was solid, and we actually finished it. It taught me a lot about scope creep and the importance of tracking and visualizing work. Sometimes you just gotta grab the situation by the horns and show everyone, plainly, how immoderate things have become before you can rein them back in. It’s messy work, but someone’s gotta do it.
