Forward Momentum: Delivering Results

by Kathy Martucci, PMP

Goldplating. Say that word out loud. It sounds really great rolling off the tongue. But wait! As rich and wonderful as it sounds, it is a dangerous trend when it starts to become the norm on your project.

As conscientious project managers, we all want our customers to be happy. So what’s wrong with making them ecstatic? What’s wrong with giving them more than they need?

Although goldplating is typically a product-related term used to indicate that the technical team is overeager or trying to find an opportunity to use new technology, features or other “bells and whistles” on your project, the tendency to over-deliver may not be confined to the technical staff.

Maybe you can rein in your developers and impress on them that goldplating is not a bargain. You can give the speech on goldplating and how it can increase operation and maintenance costs and reduce quality. But what do you do when it’s your managers and you that start to over-deliver? How can you keep perfectionists and over-achievers from going that extra mile?

The prospect of delighting, not just satisfying, your customers is appealing. But if you and your managers spend precious resources on the extras, your budget and your project are going to be out of control.

Some critical keys to project success are managing expectations, managing scope, monitoring and controlling the project execution. And, after all, it’s an accepted tenet of project management that success is delivering to the customer’s requirements, not their wish list. This is a bitter pill for us baby-boomer over-achievers to swallow. We feel guilty, as if we’re shirking a duty. But, swallow it we must. Maybe it’s enough to know that by doing so we can deliver projects on budget, on time and within quality standards.

By Vicki Wrona, PMP

One of the benefits of enrolling in a hotel program is being able to specify preferences. Recently, after making my hotel reservation, I reviewed the options presented to me. What I found was this:

To better accommodate you during your next stay,
please provide us with your room preferences.

What I found interesting about this list is that even hotels understand constraints. You not only get to register your room preferences, you then get to specify which is the most important, just in case not all preferences can be delivered. That is what a flexibility matrix does. First I will explain the matrix and then I will show you one.

I have found the flexibility matrix to be an extremely handy tool for setting expectations and encouraging helpful dialogue early in a process or project. Early, open and productive dialogue is a good practice for anyone managing almost any kind of effort to follow.

Here is how the matrix works. Early in the effort, ask both the customer and the internal sponsor to identify which of the main constraints is the least flexible. The idea here goes back to the old saying, “Good, fast or cheap. Pick any two.” The customer can have the end product good and fast, but it won’t be cheap. Or they can have it fast and cheap but it won’t be good. And so on. While we would like to have it all, it is not realistic. Even the most demanding managers want to deliver successfully, too. They do not want to look bad to their peers or bosses.

As managers, if it appears that all of the parameters outlined for a work effort cannot be met, we need to know where we have some flexibility. Can we take a little longer on the effort, delivering small pieces of the end product in chunks? Can we get a few more people to help speed things up if we are falling behind? Can we adjust the scope of the product we are creating so it can be done on time and within budget?  Now we not only know what is expected of us, we can also better manage changes.

Below is an example of a completed Flexibility Matrix. The object of this table is to have one ‘X’ per column. No cheating! It defeats the purpose of this to put more than one ‘X’ under the Least Flexible column.

• Scope is least flexible, and should be delivered as negotiated in the project plan.
• Resources are moderately flexible as there are situations which periodically allow resources to become available. Though it is never assured that more resources can be dedicated to the program, the Sponsor has indicated that the Program Manager should request additional resources when necessary in order to maintain progress.
• Schedule is the most flexible, as long as a good faith effort is shown to produce the end result.

Try this and let me know how it works for you.

by Rob Zell

When I started my career in the world of corporate training, my first assignment was to revamp the field curriculum for a retail establishment. I was brand new to the world of retail corporate training but I had confidence in my educational background and my common sense.

Unfortunately, I was faced with a boss who had an idea of training that was based on look and feel of the materials more than the content. We had many a protracted argument about what the materials should be and in the end, as you might imagine, he won out. Some classic blunders occurred along the way in the development of the materials:

1. The timeline was set without any knowledge of the scope of the work. This put the team under unnecessary pressure to reach an unrealistic deadline. Quality suffered both in the content (major pieces were missing) and presentation (typos, etc.). This led to costly reprints.
2. The presentation dictated the content rather than letting the content determine the presentation. This VP wanted books, flashy, slick, glossy books that were expensive to produce and not reusable. In a business with high hourly turnover, this proved to be costly and inefficient. This led to costly reprints.
3. The VP wanted all of the operations content reproduced in the training materials. There was already a voluminous Standard Operating Procedures Manual (SOP) that included all the relevant information. It was intended to be used as the fundamental resource of the organization. Rather than using this to supplement the training, we circumvented it. When operational procedures changed, the training materials were instantly out of date. This led to costly reprints.

See a pattern developing here? Had we followed some basic best practices of training development, we could have saved the company thousands of dollars. If you want to create quality materials that will stand the test of organizational change, follow some simple steps:

1. Make sure the desired behavioral change drives the delivery format. Work performed on the sales floor should be trained using tools that work on the sales floor or at a minimum simulate the sales floor experience.
2. Examine the scope of work before determining the timeline. Sometimes you don’t have the time for your perfect timeline. In this case, make sure you present the organization with good/better/best options so that your client can make an informed decision.
3. Teach people to fish. If there are tools that exist in the organization and are the standard for performance, make sure that the training materials refer learners to the tools. In the end, learners are better prepared to succeed if they know how to use the resources available.

What do you think? I was just starting in my career and didn’t have the tools or the political credibility to influence my boss. How have you been able to change the shape and direction of training when faced with similar obstacles?