Do Not Shortcut the Instruments or Tools to Realize the End Product

This weekend I invited a close friend of mine to visit a nonprofit leadership center I oversee to give us some advice. He is a seasoned executive at a large retailer and supervises dozens of stores around the region. As head of the institute, and the main instructor my attention is usually drawn to compliance, curriculum and the overall performance of the organization. As he walked in he joined the trailing part of a financial reporting meeting and offered a couple of suggestions for a new program, we then proceeded outdoors to take a holistic view of the organization from outside. What comes next was very interesting.

He pointed out weeds on the sidewalk, and some stains on the building trim. Then he pointed out a few items that are not obvious to someone like myself who mostly focuses on the results and end deliverable. In other words he was able to make me realize that sometimes we get so entrenched in the mission or objective of the project; or we are operating on an agile framework delivering the next generation product while in the process the tools and artifacts used to get there are sub-quality.

Quite often on complex technology projects the team is busy delivering product value and checking off the deliverable list, while in the process they neglect the tools and instruments used to achieve those deliverables. For example the engineering team might produce a set of technical documents, however the document might not be totally polished like one that is being presented to the end user; margins might be inconsistent, different fonts on the same page, figures not numbered.

Agile project management should not mean producing internal PMO artifacts that have mismatched fonts or different font sizes, margins that look off, or a document that is lacking a table of contents. While it is true the client will never see these documents, and its only for the purposes of planning, but the fact that an instrument overall quality and aesthetics will eventually reflect the end product.

The lesson I learned is that a good balance across all areas of a project or organization is required. It is not enough to have a quality product, even if it sells well. The process in achieving the product also needs to be totally shiny and attractive even though the client is not paying for it.

Achieving Team Excellence: Is an A Good Enough?

All it takes for a team to malfunction is for each of its members to score an average A in the team member's task. A grade of A is 90% or higher, so if we have a team of two people each scoring 90%, then out of 10 tasks they are working on, up to two could potentially have faults or defects in them. Pretty outstanding is in it! In reality if they are working on the same tasks and each team member had a defect in a task that is different from the one his peer reported a defect, we have an overall score of a B, and not an A.

Now imagine a team of five people working on a project, and each one of them has a set of tasks to accomplish, these tasks are intertwined and interdependent. With each one of the team members experiencing just one defect out of 10 activities means we have a total of 5 or less defects out of 50. If these activities are coupled and some could be common the actual impact is equivalent to more than just 5 defects out of 50, worse case is 5 defects out of 10 if all tasks are common across the team, which equates to an F.

Teams members need to not just achieve grade A quality, but reach above and beyond an A, to allow the team to strive for an A grade satisfaction and excellence.

Stakeholder Analysis: Are We Doing Enough?

Many organizations and individuals focus on satisfying the customer, which is of course one of the basic rules of business. After all, no customer equals no business. However the majority of us do not have a comprehensive look at all stakeholders. Stakeholders include not only customers, but suppliers, partners, customers' suppliers, policy makers, our own management, investors and the list goes on.

If you are a non-profit school your students and their parents are your customers, and you ought to make sure the services they are receiving are top notch quality. However your donors are also key stakeholders. They have high interest in what you do, otherwise they would not have donated their hard earned dollars, and they have high power in supporting your mission. Maybe even more than the customer. Does you school stay in continuous touch with the donors? Does it constantly solicit feedback from them? Do they have representation at your various governance bodies?

One useful tool to analyze stakeholders is to look at their power and their interest, we call that a power/interest grid. Power can be mapped on one dimension and interest on another, as shown in the top figure.


Another tool is a matrix linking stakeholder groups and their interests to an entity's capabilities allowing the identification of value gap to be addressed. A sample of such a simple stakeholder alignment matrix is on the right. It allows us to align our capabilities to our stakeholder's interest and needs.

The Demise of Quality - My Wife's Friend, British Airways and Air France

I was vacuuming the living room last evening, when my wife told me that her friend arrived safely in Egypt after a long flight from Washington with a connection in London. She then added that her 10 year old son is walking around in his swimsuit at home and her friend is wearing some old maternity clothes she had from a decade ago. I asked my wife "Did they lost their luggage?", she replied that no a single bag of the eight pieces her friend and her three kids had arrived.

It has been two days since my wife's friend family had arrived on board British Airways with no luggage. I mentioned to my wife that her friend should request a compensation of some sort, may $100 per passenger, so they can use this modest pocket money to go buy some clothes until their bags appear. My wife's response was "we are thankful that they arrived safely". Well, yes of course compared to Air France's latest flight that plunged in the Atlantic, the losses and inconvenience is minimal, and one should always be thankful, regardless of what one goes through". The point however is that the passenger's (customer) expectation is be transported safely along with his luggage from point A to point B. If customer's start changing their expectations, quality will automatically by definition change.

An attorney would seize the opportunity and ask the passenger to file a suit against the airline asking for some ridiculous amount of money as a compensation for damages. Maybe $1 million dollars per lost bag, or the highest that the court will allow. We have various mindsets of customers when it comes to settling disputes with a service provider. At one extreme a client will say no problem, just get me my bags if you can, when you can. On another extreme another customer will say meet me at court, and then there are infinite of perspectives in between.

What would you do? What would a good system's engineer do? Share your thoughts in the comments below.