Today, I had an interesting conversation with one of my clients and the essence of that discussion (it's a debate, rather) is about Speed and Quality of the deliverables.
Working in software services, being a developer, I always felt that Speed is inversely proportional to Quality, and I am sure many people agree with me on this.
Let me elaborate on this equation with one example which, I think, relates to most of us:
We get to work on a task (seldom on something that we haven't done before) and even before we are clear on what needs to be done (forget about how !), deadlines are set and the client keeps asking for a status update, regularly !! A situation that is quite common in software services ;-) By hook or crook, when the product is delivered, the client looks at it and says - "you took so long to develop such a piece of sh**" !! It's again Speed and Quality !!!
Putting it simply, we (the ones who deliver) think that speed is inversely proportional to quality while the consumer of our services expect that the delivery should be faster without compromising quality :-(
Now, the obvious question here is how do we bridge the gap between Speed and Quality? Although I don't have a generic solution for this but from my experience, I would like to list down some of the approaches that I had followed to give a feeling that speed and quality are balanced (to the best possible extent ;-) ).
- Set proper expectations (or don't show-off much or identify the expertise available)
- Set the scope of the deliverables (just don't say that "everything" will be taken care, while you are not sure what is covered by saying - "everything")
- Try to get the estimates right
- Get a sign off on the list of items that will be delivered
- Review the deliverables thoroughly and then make a release (this item links to "estimations")
If you think I have missed an approach or an item in my approach, feel free to drop a comment :-)
0 comments:
Post a Comment