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Learning from your Project Surprises

Project Tip #1 - Change Management

Welcome to our first monthly newsletter. For opt out and/or modifications to your preferences please see the bottom of the page. I wish you and your families a joyous holiday seasons!

This time of year we are all looking forward to the surprises under the tree. On the projects we are working on it is quite the opposite. As we execute on any given project we will come across the unexpected "surprise". How a team deals with that surprise will determine the ability of the team to learn from it. If they just deal with the issue and move on; the same, or very similar issue will be sure to return again. A highly successful team will dissect the issue, completely understand it's sources and implement corrective action on the spot.

The corrective action to permanently deal with a given surprise must be handled as an update to the design process. This action must be jointly agreed upon by the team and then any documentation must be updated. Keep in mind that documentation is not the corrective action, it's the mutual team agreement that will eliminate revisiting the same, or similar surprises down the road.

One area that must be closely monitored during project execution is changes to project scope. If this is not done team members are not sure what is and is not a real requirement and will usually assume it's real. After all engineers love to engineer! The team will quietly assume a new feature is a real requirement and before you know it the schedule has slipped. The term that I use for this feature progression is "Feature Creep".

Feature creep must be managed and decisions need to be made by the project management team before the design team is drawn into it. I suggest that weekly design team meetings have a topic of feature creep with the intention of ferreting out behind the scenes changes in scope. Additionally, a key interface that needs to be monitored is the marketing/design team leader, since this is where many scope changes will be born. If you do not pay attention to the feature creep aspect of your design process, be prepared for surprises to follow.

I am not advocating that change is bad and should be avoided. What is important is that there is communication about a potential change and the proper assessment is made before redirecting your resources. It is really about being conscious that potential changes will be discussed and that you have mechanisms in place to gate scope change activities.