Preventative Action

To keep projects running smoothly, experienced project leaders/manager think ahead, and employ "preventative action" patterns to reduce or eliminate risk.

A well-executed preventative action reduces or eliminates the need for a CorrectiveAction. A poorly executed preventative action can backfire. AntiPatterns include instances of poorly thought-out or executed preventative actions.

A surprise project review is a good example of a risk to project stability that needs to be managed. First-time project leaders may react by "stopping the show" to prepare for the review; more experienced project leaders think ahead to how the review may destabilize the project, and may employ a number of preventative actions, including negotiating to contain the scope of the review.

Examples of preventative actions include

• DryRunBackup
• ScriptTheDemo

-- DaveSmith 11/1/95

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How about the DoubleTheEstimate? pattern to deal with incurable programmer optimism. -- BlakeCoverett

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From my experiences, DoubleTheEstimate? can be a little dangerous. Recently, we had a £500 piece of work charged at £2000 due to two people applying this pattern! The client was appalled, and it was basically unfair. I think a better pattern would be QuestionTheEstimate?, where the PM asks the developer if they have included design time, talk time, testing time and meeting time in their estimate. Even better, educate the eager developer in software estimation techniques?! -- TobinHarris (20-May-2001)

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Preventative? What's wrong with Preventive? -- Sitaram Chamarty (10-Jan-2002) (sitaram@dimensional.com)