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When Project Quality Gets in the Way

May 6, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Lessons Learned, Project Management Best Practices, Quality Management

When Project Quality Gets in the Way
By David Egan, Global Knowledge Instructor

Ever had someone take forever to deliver their product all in the name of quality? How do you rein in ‘perfect’ people when you have deadlines?

Perfection is normally in the eye of the beholder. But if you never let anyone else look at it, you are the judge, jury, and executioner.

Under-funding a project with either capital, people, or incentives to finish the project are a recipe for disaster. In the Information Technology (IT) world, companies are prone to initiating multiple projects using various people. In some cases, the same person may have multiple projects to deal with while still doing their normal daily jobs.

These projects are started without proper project plans or management. Often times, these simple ‘requests’ are taken as an afterthought, a new requirement or added scope to an already established project.

Protect Your Scope

As a good project manager, protection of scope is paramount. You must be able to establish auxiliary projects for these scope creep issues.

One of my recent past projects was the updating of a very highly technical book about a popular operating system. I was the original book author but it was based on a version of the OS that had since been updated twice. These version changes of said operating system were standard operating procedure and mostly for security enhancements.

Sadly, the project initiation was about half way between one of these standard OS software updates. The requested deadline was about the time for the next updated OS version release. Some of the changes were public knowledge, but not everything related to the display and options that were in this book were mentioned in any press release. These projected OS version changes were just that, projected, you knew it would happen around the said time but it could be 2-5 months on either side of the projected date.

In this case, the base OS software was updated and released on the expected date. I was unable to convince the publisher to extend the deadline enough to include the new version changes. There were a few changes that I knew were not going to require any updates but the graphical interface had once again been modified slightly which made some of the material in the first chapters look outdated. Since I was not absolutely sure how radical the changes would or could be in six months, the project manager nixed the request, kept to the deadlines he had already set, and we delivered our product to the stores one day after the version change. I figured this would make our product obsolete before it hit the shelves. Fortunately for all, I was wrong.

Lessons Learned

I wanted to be perfect, he wanted to be done. I needed a lot more time to be perfect; he needed to see a return on his investment in me now. In actual fact, the revision to the underlying software was not a major cause for concern and the book sales were not adversely affected at all. It was such as small change in the minds of the users, it was not commonly implemented for almost 6 months or more on average by most of the known sites.

Being perfect is nice, but the price has to be weighed by the project manager. Like Spock said in Star Trek II before he died (and was later resurrected–but that’s a different story), “.the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

Perfection takes way more time than you will ever have on a project. As the Project Manager, you have to make the final decision against the odds of changes required in the future. On lengthy projects, scope creep will probably be the biggest concern down the road. Remember to stick to your initial scope statement. Anything else is another project.

David Egan - RHCE, MCSE, PMP: Consulting Services Linux, UNIX, NT - Project Mgmt, Systems Configuration, Integration, Security and Networking

This article was originally published in Global Knowledge’s Business Brief e-newsletter. Global Knowledge delivers comprehensive hands-on project management, business process, and professional skills training. Visit our online Knowledge Center at www.globalknowledge.com/business for free white papers, webinars, and more.

© Copyright 2009, Global Knowledge. All rights reserved.

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