It’s all about The Money.
From the view of the supplier/consultant/contractor/trainer: “I will do the work and I want to get paid in full”.
From the view of the client: “I will pay when I’m happy that the work is complete, and I get the results I want.
(The usual references appear at the foot of this article)
I am convinced that the solution to these problems has to include well-defined Acceptance Tests, and like anything else, practice makes perfect, so let us start today.
The Cheque
Johnny’s goal is, of course, the cheque, but Johnny won’t get the cheque until the CEO is convinced that the CEO’s goal has been reached.
Hence Johnny’s first task is to clarify the goal.
Which mountain (spatial) of all the mountains encompassed in the CEO’s wave of a hand?
By when (date/time)?
Within what budget (numeric)?
Johnny needs to get written down (“If it ain’t written down, it don’t exist”) a formal specification of The Goal in a format that the CEO can understand.
For a short project, it is cash-in-advance, or a 50% deposit, to be sure. For longer projects it is pay-as-you-go, which is why we have Deliverables.
Pause, and think of the last time you handed over a cheque and weren’t happy about it.
I bet that The Cheque was not congruent to The Goal. (Free lunch at The Montreal Deli if you can prove me wrong).
I’ll go further and bet that The Goal did not have sufficient quantifiers of sufficient quality to support a cheque.
When was the last time you did not get paid?
I bet that you had no way of measuring your success against stated quantifiers in The Goal.
That’s why trainers issue evaluation forms for each day of a 4-day training course; “Please let us hear about the small problems before we get to the cheque problem”.
Why Projects Fail
IT-Cortex report.
An Emerald Insight abstract.
A Cnet-news article.”
