Yesterday, I said a well done audit report can tell you what's wrong and how to fix it, but it won't put anything on your plan for you. And if you've ever been in similar rooms I've been in, you'll have heard this quite a few times.
We'll make time.
Wonderful! It sounds like a commitment, but avoids saying what we'll stop doing.
You can't make time. You can't find any lying around either. Most teams already have more work planned than they can comfortably finish.
So if an audit finds that patients can't book an appointment with a keyboard, the fix has to take the place of something else. Perhaps instead of a less urgent feature. Perhaps you can reduce the scope of the next release.
I know none of these choices are comfortable. Someone has already promised the other work. Moving it means explaining why.
But leaving the issues in a backlog is a choice too. It leaves patients dealing with the problem while the team builds on top of broken things.
I don't need anyone to conjure up an extra week. I'd rather just hear a clear decision:
We're moving the redesign to the next release so the team can fix and retest booking now.
Now you've given the fix a place in the plan and everyone sees the cost.
Next time someone says they'll make time, ask them what they'll drop instead.