Where a part below depends on the answer, each passage opens with its answer in bold. Find yours.
What the answer establishes
The delay is known. The owner it affects has not agreed to it. You know what the next step displaces, and the owner of that work has not agreed to the delay. The tradeoff is visible and unaccepted, which means it will be made by whoever moves first and carried by whoever was not asked.
The plan assumes spare capacity that nobody has checked. The plan assumes capacity that nobody has checked. If the capacity is not there, the next step is taken from whatever was already late, and the cost lands on someone who did not agree to it and may not find out until the review.
I don't know yet. What the next step would delay is not known. Until it is, the step is an addition to someone's week rather than a decision about it, and additions are how a plan fails without anyone deciding that it should.
The question to ask next
The delay is known. The owner it affects has not agreed to it. Ask the owner of the displaced work, with the delay stated: this moves your item by about this much; can you carry that, and if not, what would you move instead? The answer may be no. A no with a reason is a decision. Silence is not consent.
The plan assumes spare capacity that nobody has checked. Ask whoever holds the plan: which item would this come out of? If the answer is that there is room, ask what was delivered late last month. The second answer usually corrects the first.
I don't know yet. Ask whoever holds the plan what the next step would move, and who would feel the delay. If nobody can say, the plan is not detailed enough to take a step from, and that is the first thing to fix.
The small step
The delay is known. The owner it affects has not agreed to it. Put the trade in writing, one line: this step, the item it delays, by how much, and who carries it. Send it to the owner of the displaced work and to whoever can authorize the trade. Then wait for the answer rather than starting on the assumption of one.
The plan assumes spare capacity that nobody has checked. Size the next step honestly, name the item it would come out of, and take both to the person who can authorize the trade. If you do not hold the plan, propose the trade rather than making it. The proposal is within your remit. The decision may not be.
I don't know yet. Write down what you know about the plan: what is committed this quarter, what has slipped, and where the next step would fit. Take it to whoever holds the plan as a question rather than a request. A question about capacity gets an answer. A request for it becomes another item.
What it costs
The displaced work is late by the stated amount, and its owner carries that. Naming the delay makes it visible without making it smaller. Asking may also get a no, in which case the next step waits, and that is the tradeoff working as intended. The alternative is capacity borrowed from whichever item was quietest.
What changes the advice
If the owner agrees the trade, the open question is whether the person taking the step has what they need, which is question six. If nobody can authorize the trade, the capacity decision sits a level up, and the step within your remit is the proposal, not the work.
Read next
Essay
Too many priorities, none of them yours
A remit is a sentence that declines something, and the essay says what someone who does not control the plan can still propose.
Essay
The review queue has one person's name on it
Work left off the plan still gets done. Leaving it off only hides which commitment will pay for it.
The other exercise here runs the same way on a fictional quarter: four demands, capacity for two, and what each pair cost. Tradeoffs