Quality

There is a moment in my workshops that I have learned to wait for. I am showing something on screen, agents doing their thing, and somewhere in the middle of it I drop the line. Casually. The way you’d mention the weather: “…and then I usually tell it: when done, commit and push.” And the room changes.

If projects were completely predictable, there would be no need for risk management . Everything could be planned and executed according to plan. However, we know better. Unexpected things happen, disrupt the original plans and cause time and cost overruns. In IT projects, these overruns are far too common to be ignored.

Implementation is like marriage. For better or worse, you choose a piece of software, take it under your roof and commit to it for a long term, so help you God. And as in marriage, if you want to live happily ever after with your new software, the my way or the highway attitude doesn’t help much—you must be open to compromise.

Last week I participated in a discussion about budgets and whether you should ask your potential customers their budget. It made me think: how often do customers reveal their project budgets before the consultants bid? From my personal experience—not too often. What a waste! Of time, money, and opportunity.