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August 2005: Sleeping Soundly

As the senior manager of a product development organization, the ultimate responsibility for the success of your projects lies with you; and there is nothing quite like a late or over budget project to cause a sleepless night.

It might look something like this: the lights are out, all is quiet in the house, and yet you find yourself tossing and turning. You kick off the blankets and go to get a drink of water. As you take a sip, a pang of anxiety strikes you. You realize that your project launch is just two days away, and there is virtually no chance the product is going to be ready.

If you’re like the rest of us, what normally happens at this point is that you start to ask questions. “Why is our project not finished? Our projects are always late!” “Why are there so many bugs? We can never get the bugs out!” You resolve to go in the next day and get to the bottom of it.

Development is a difficult and tricky business, but there is no reason why it should cause fitful nights. The key is to change the dynamics of your product development organization so that problems like this don’t arise. A late or over-budget project is only the visible effect of a host of unseen problems, and, in development, every surprise comes at a steep cost.

There are concrete ways that you can improve your product development organization to prevent critical problems before they arise. Making these three seemingly steps, and committing your entire organization to them, is the key to a sound night’s sleep.

EMPHASIZE REQUIREMENTS & DESIGN
High performing development organizations consistently gather requirements and insist on high quality design documents. These early phases of the process make sure that everyone downstream is building the same product, and make it more likely that issues will be addressed when they are easier and quicker to fix.

MAKE YOUR MILESTONES DEMONSTRABLE
The easier it is for you to see project status, the less likely it is that there will be surprises. This requires some planning and communication, but it pays off if your team really sticks with this. A “show me” policy is the best single thing you can do to make sure that your status reports are useful.

CONDUCT POST-MORTEMS
Many organizations do post-mortems after projects fail, but they provide the greatest benefit if done after every project. This is the best way to share what worked and what didn’t work. If this becomes a routine effort, and transcends the “placing blame” stage, your team will come to enjoy deconstructing the latest project.