Pre-orders for Microsoft’s X-Box Series X were basically sold out.
This is not surprising. The performance is faster, the graphics are gorgeous, and a game pass gives you easy access to hundreds of games. And, although you have to wait almost a year, it’s anticipated with excitement, sometimes a longing.
It’s transformative.
Of course, once you get the console, you’ll play around, hang out in the chat, and probably start to make plans about where to spend a few hours exploring the next time.
Sony, whose PlayStation 5 was released just two days later, could probably build a games console a lot faster. A team of PMs doing a functional decomposition and a work breakdown structure would probably estimate the duration at about 9 months. That’s where the critical path shows the minimum time necessary to complete the entire project.
But they’re not in the business of building games consoles. The games consoles are a window, a means, a chance to create.
If you run everything through a Gantt chart, you might end up with a logical plan, but the logical plan isn’t what enables passion or delight or change.