When you can't get a start

Our latest interesting item involves getting a project kicked off. Most companies can't hold back identifying items they want for the next version. We seem to have the opposite problem. They can't decide what they want to include. There seems to be a fear of taking responsibility for picking the wrong item. I've been working with the product owners to make things as loosely defined as possible. That has had limited success. At least they aren't trying to define the solutions before we understand what's possible. Unfortunately they still are in the old mindset of 12+ month release cycles (this one is 15 months out). Did I also mention that the initial kickoff for this version is eight months late and the target ship date is now more than 12 months later than the initial target.

As I tell people, sometimes a wrong decision is better than no decision. And with shorter cycles we could afford to ship a sub-optimal solution and fix it in a subsequent release. Oh, quarterly releases are such a pleasant sounding dream....