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SpeedVersusQualityDoubleBind

Your manager, Uno, demands that you and your teammates deliver your product in 60 days. You have been working on the product for 90 days. That change accelerates the schedule by 20 days. Furthermore, she says all functionality must be delivered. You know you can't deliver all the functionality and meet the schedule. You tell her that quality will suffer. She says that meeting the schedule is vital and quality must be high. You are mystified.

You ask her, "Why?" She gives you the standard speal about market conditions. You feel she isn't giving you the whole story. You probe some other people: A reliable source tells you Duo, Uno's manager, has promised his manager, Tray, delivery in 60 days. You interepret that Uno is being a good lieutenant and following orders.

Duo was brought into the organization by Tray a few years. Duo was expected to increase both incremental revenue and the speed products are brought to market while simultaneously increasing product quality. The expectations haven't been met. Your source tells you that Duo is worried about keeping his job.

Tray has spoken to your organization and emphasized the importance of quality. The company has eight products and she said that customer perceptions about quality of any product affect the sales of other products. She says without improvements in quality the organization will fail, which experience suggests means a reduction in the number of products and hence a reduction in the number of people, which might mean you lose your job.

Your source also tells you that Tray wants to show the financial community that your company delivers on its revenue forecasts. Your product was forecasted to show revenue shortly.

You want to do the right thing. But you think regardless of whatever you and your team does, someone will be dissatisfied and you may lose your job. What would you do?

SteveSmith 2006.01.16

Center yourself. You're in an insane sitatuation, but you're still sane and capable of ethical action.

Enter your manager's system. "I realize that you're under a lot of pressure and are being asked to do the impossible," or "I wouldn't want to be in your shoes right now."

Turn the energy away from being a conflict between you and your boss, and towards the problem of where you both find yourself in the system. "We don't believe that we can meet the new schedule given quality requirement placed on use by Tray. How can we work together to adjust expectations upstream about how much will get done by the deadline? Let's prioritize the work now, so that the truly important stuff will get done first."

I rather expect you'll feel stuck on this last part, because it might take adopting a "broken record" strategy, where you have to repeat the message over and over and over and over and ... until your boss gets that you're not going to budge, and that it isn't a conflict between the two of you, and that you won't let it be a conflict.

The only times I've come out of situations like this in good shape are when I've held my ground in a non-confrontational way, staying "on message" through enough cycles of repeat to wear down the people who were asking me to commit to the impossible. Then I make extra sure that I do what I said I could do. Having a current resume and a plan B doesn't hurt, either.

DaveSmith 2006.01.16

I like Dave's comments about managing expectations and the situation.

Here is a different tact. Maybe my team and I are inefficient. If we were smarter, maybe we could shorten the schedule, deliver all the features, and have high quality.

I could say to my boss, "The team and I are doing the best we know how. We cannot make schedule, features, and quality knowing what we know. Can you show us other methods, techniques, tools - anything so that we can perform better?"

It is possible that the boss can teach us to do better. There are many people at AYE and on this wiki who know a lot of good techniques for doing better. I shouldn't assume that I know and use all the good techniques.

DwaynePhillips 17 January 2006

SteveSmith 2006.01.17