5-Minute Tools for Product Leaders: Managing Bottlenecks Using the PERT Chart

If you have ever watched the series Salvation on Netflix, you may have heard the term ‘First things first’ occasionally. In the fast-paced sci-fi genius entrepreneur Darius Tanz often needs to make decisions that could alter the fate of the planet. It is in these high-stakes moments when, as a sign of intense concentration, he starts to roll his eyes, runs through possible various courses of action, and finally concludes which step to take that would prove to be more influential than others.

While as product leaders we rarely need to save the world, we do need to set direction on how we grow products, teams, and eventually ourselves. And just like Mr. Tanz, we often face multiple possible options to choose from.

A bottleneck is the single most important element that constrains a system - like the neck of a bottle limits the amount of water that flows through. And as Eliyahu M. Goldratt argues in his book The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, the ability to consistently identify and lift bottlenecks is a fundamental management competence.

In this article I will describe a practical application for project delivery, the PERT chart.

PERT stands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique. It is a tool to facilitate planning by mapping and visualizing dependencies between deliverables and resources. It is also the single most useful tool I have found to help planning and keeping track of more complex projects. Miro and Lucidchart have built-in PERT chart templates.

I have been using the Miro template and like to apply it in a slightly adjusted way. By adding responsible teams, members, and coloured status indicators to each of the deliverables, you can get a single overview of (1) what should be done, (2) by who, (3) by when, (4) what the dependencies are, (5) and their statuses.

By then grouping the individual deliverables, you can visualize the higher-level building blocks of the project and their lower-level content. This is like adding an epic level on top of stories, in traditional development terms.

Once you have the mapped chart, you can also identify the longest series of interdependent steps in the project: the critical chain. Eliyahu M. Goldratt points out in this subsequent book, Critical Chain, that as project manager you need to pay particular attention to the progress on this chain. You should focus on removing any blockers or taking use of any early deliveries in this thread, as the length of the critical chain directly defines the length of the project. In our example I have highlighted it using the green boxes below.

I have been using the adjusted PERT chart for mapping more complex development projects at their start, and then updating it occasionally as needed. Creating the chart in advance does not mean you need to know everything in advance. But you need to understand the backbone of the project and be able to adjust as you progress – which for me is precisely the purpose of it. It takes you through an exercise of thinking in and mapping the subsequent bottlenecks of the project for unlocking the intended value, and refining these as you learn along the way. Using it can be beneficial primarily for product leaders who assume a project manager role.

The chart has helped increase my ownership over projects, reduce my cognitive load, drive discussion on the project structure with the development team, create transparency and trust towards stakeholders, and to generally track and manage progress. I usually create it at the beginning once, and then update a few times when I feel it is useful, without sticking to any very rigorous schedule.

I have found that the PERT chart is primarily for the PM and the close team. It is complicated to use as a regular progress reporting tool towards stakeholders - I usually use a regular text or table format for this purpose.

This article is the first part of a series with the goal to help product leaders grow, by describing practical tools I have found useful throughout my career. The articles will aim to find a sweet spot between being short enough to read in 5 minutes and long enough to inspire to try or initiate discussions on them. Stay tuned for the next one.