Why it happens
- Each team has private knowledge that they're behind, but doesn't want to be the first to admit it.
- The cultural cost of slipping first is high — leadership treats early slips harshly.
- Teams assume at least one other will slip first, masking their own.
- Meanwhile, the schedule visibly stays green across all teams.
How to detect it
- All teams reporting green simultaneously, week after week, with no amber transitions. Suspicious.
- Cross-team dependencies that have stopped being discussed. Real schedules generate dependency conversations.
- Sprint reviews that show progress on individual stories but not on integrated functionality.
↳ in the wild
The most expensive failures aren't the surprise ones — they're the ones everyone could have called eight weeks ago. The PM who breaks schedule chicken first looks like the bad-news messenger; in reality they're saving the entire program.
How to break it
- Reward teams that escalate concerns early. Public credit for early-warning calls.
- Run cross-team integration tests, demos, or dry runs as early as possible. Forces real status to surface.
- Replace per-team RAG with a single integrated RAG for the program. Everyone's status moves together; nobody can hide.