Software delivery timelines are notoriously difficult to shrink. While methodologies like Agile promise efficiency, real-world complexity often introduces friction that slows teams down. Drawing from recent successful large-scale projects involving multiple teams and shortened deadlines, key principles emerge for cutting through the noise and accelerating delivery.

The Core Principle: Do Things Fast (Without the Friction)

The author's guiding star is strikingly simple: "Have a list of things to do, and try to do them as fast as reasonably possible." This principle ruthlessly exposes any activity that doesn't directly contribute to this goal as waste. This includes excessive Agile ceremonies:

"We stopped doing [bi-weekly sprints] for these projects... The PM just had an excel spreadsheet, with dates. I did not realize how much waste we had by forcing everything to a two week cycle. We spent too much time trying to plan two weeks out... It is just so much easier to say ‘ok we want to do this in two days, and then this in the next three days’ etc."

Flexibility is paramount. When estimates are wrong or new tasks emerge, the focus remains on adjusting the list and timeline pragmatically, not adhering to a ceremonial cycle.

The Power of Parallelism: Trading Short-Term Pain for Long-Term Speed

Acceleration demands working on interdependent tasks concurrently, even when it feels inefficient upfront. A common example pits software development against deployment:

"It is more work for everyone... trying to do both writing code and deployment at the same time. Software devs have to make up some reasonably scoped requirements (which will later change) for the DevOps folks to even get started. The DevOps folks may need to work on Docker images (which will later change). So it is more work... but drastically reduces the overall deliverable timelines."

This applies equally to requirements gathering and development. Waiting for perfect requirements before starting work is often a losing strategy. Starting development while requirements are refined, accepting some rework, gets results faster. Similarly, identifying potential future needs and starting proof-of-concepts during slack time, even if they change, provides a crucial head start.

The Crucial Role of Vision and Task Breakdown

Creating the right list of tasks is the hardest part. It requires deep technical and domain expertise:

"You need someone who understands front to back what the software solution will look like, how it interacts with the world around it... to be able to translate that vision into a tangible list of things to-do."

Without this vision, teams risk months of wasted effort. Once the vision exists, tasks must be broken down aggressively:

"Majority of devs tasks should be 1/2/3 days of work at max... Being more specific is almost always worth my time as opposed to less specific."

This granularity combats Parkinson's Law (work expands to fill the time available) and enables realistic tracking. Senior leadership must also set ambitious but achievable timelines, forcing necessary prioritization and resource allocation.

GenAI: Tool, Not Silver Bullet

The author notes GenAI's current impact is marginal in replacing development work, though useful for writing specific code snippets. Its effective use mirrors project management fundamentals:

"Using the genAI tools to write code though looks very much like project management, identifying smaller and more manageable tasks for the machine to work on, then testing those, and moving onto the next steps."

Large-scale legacy conversions or deployments remain fundamentally human-led endeavors requiring clear planning, parallelization, and task breakdown – mismanagement, not technical complexity, often causes excessive timelines.

The Takeaway: Velocity Through Pragmatism

Successful project management boils down to eliminating distractions from the core work, embracing the short-term chaos of parallel execution to achieve long-term speed, and maintaining a razor focus on breaking down work into executable chunks guided by technical vision. Rigid adherence to any single methodology is less important than the relentless pursuit of doing valuable things quickly.

Source: Andrew Wheeler, 'Some Notes on Project Management' (andrewpwheeler.com, July 20, 2025)