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I usually say the most deceiving tool in the world is Excel, and I might add the most deceiving metric in the world is the deadline, often done by using Excel. In any project such as the one we are doing with the house, after the typical question of “what is your budget”, the second question is “what is your deadline”, and this is when the dance of expectations starts, versus the reality that trickles down as you execute the project.
In 1997 when I founded Grandesign in Marinha Grande, I had a chance of working closely with the plastics injection tool making business, this area grew from their expertise with glass and became one of the most important tool-making areas in the world, serving customers from automotive to medical. The companies providing tool making services knew very well how to use Excel and deadlines to manage expectations with their customers. This activity involved sophisticated engineering in some cases, and customers typically had trained buyers who knew very well what they were buying and the risks with budgets and deadlines. There was a saying they used when customers wanted things faster, along the lines of “the max speed for cutting steel is XX rpm, and we cannot move any faster, it’s the law of physics”. Of course, this was deceiving in so many ways, and the more experienced buyers would know how to make things move faster. But there was always a moment when, even with very rigid and onerous contracts, the tool makers would agree on a deadline, knowing very well they would not be able to meet it.
When doing a renovation like the one we are doing, and in the conditions we are doing it (we need to put our house in the market in the spring and move to the new place), the deadline becomes critical. We soon realize that this was the single most important criteria that made us choose a master contractor from the start, instead of acting like one ourselves. We did get some estimates and deadlines that pointed to dates that were not feasible, so we kept on reducing scope and we found someone that said, and wrote down in a contract, that he could meet the deadline that was defined. But soon after the project started it became apparent that the deadline would not be met, and even with the contingency we designed into the plan, it looks like we will be moving into a house that will not be as finished as we expected. Many of you will say duhhh, many of you will empathize with this, we will get through it. But I have been thinking about establishing and meeting deadlines in general, why do so many deadlines get blown, some catastrophically, I went to find out the latest and greatest about the topic.
I live in a city famous for blowing out a deadline big time, the Boston’s Big Dig was initially estimated for $2.8 billion and planned for completion in the early 1990s, it ended up costing over $14 billion and took decades. True that this type of projects have a thick layer of political, environmental and engineering challenges that I don’t, but it seems small and large projects miss their deadlines for the same typical reasons. While there is some nature (cognitive biases, personality traits, …) versus nurture (experience, communication, …), it all comes down to:
- Optimistic scheduling that flies in the face of experience
- Lack of detailed planning and understanding of dependencies
- Initial requirements, scope creep and change management
As a designer, this is all too familiar, teams engage in optimistic scheduling ignoring more experienced folks that know how long things will actually take. Detailed planning might exist, but if dependencies are out of the zone of influence and control, it comes down to luck. No matter the quality of the brief (if it exists), scope creep is something that will always happen, so it all comes down to managing changes and compromising. As a manager, it is our job to look for efficiencies and to install a sense of urgency, while improving on the way of working, respecting process while ensuring quality. Easy, right? I don’t want to sound like it can’t be done, there are effective managers that know how to do integrated project management, with clear milestones and rigid timelines, and contingency plans that work when needed. There are teams that know how to do effective iterative testing and rapid prototyping, that deeply understand cross-disciplinary collaboration, that understand the art of compromising without endangering vision and quality.
An old house is a trove of surprises, every day you uncover something that challenges assumptions and impacts both budgets and deadlines. People, the most complex entity to manage in a project, are also the best chance you have at succeeding in the grand scheme of things, deadlines will be blown, budgets will be exceeded, as long as people have good and constant communication, it all works out. I hope.
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