so i know that me saying that crunch is often a stakeholder issue was "spicy", & there was a lovely tweet from someone who wasn't at #pbp21 about this particular take.
Seeing as the tweet took my words out of context (unsurprising as they weren't listening to me) let's discuss!

I mentioned in the talk that agile project management should focus on the outcome (the what) rather than the output (the how).
If we plan specifically based on _output_ we're 100% predicting every problem we'll come across, along with assuming their solutions and more.

I don't think it's particularly revolutionary when I say that planning based on rigid assumptions of how you're going to do things is risky from a scope POV.

Here's a short article about why this distinction is important for design-heavy projects: https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/what-are-outcome-based-roadmaps/

Now we get to the point where I said that crunch was OFTEN a "stakeholder rather than production issue". Production can plan out lots of stuff pretty darn well. I have faith that most producers would have the tools and experience to be able to successfully plan a project.

The itch is that we're looking for something that can be pretty hard to quantify in a gantt chart ("fun").
It's not (usually) a producer that comes to the table with a new feature or changes the narrative or scraps half a project in order to chase after "fun". It's a stakeholder.

It's someone who has a vested interest in the monetisation of the product, or of the studio's brand, or in their personal style of design/storytelling/whatever. It could also be external -- maybe something political happened that changes the context?

maybe a similar title was announced and you need to pivot? Perhaps your publishers still have deadlines that don't accommodate for such a change, & you have to show something at X date or risk losing funding?

Basically, even a perfectly finessed prod plan may not survive this.

This is what i mean when I say that crunch is often a stakeholder issue, rather than a production planning issue.

Hope that clears up any 'quality control' questions.

Ahmed Sidky also did a really good talk on outcome vs output strategy here: )