Making choices in projects and in life

A while back I worked as a programmer for a retail software outfit that is no longer in business. Its name lives on as an Amazon storefront, but the original model it used to sell product couldn’t survive the ubiquity of the PC.

But that’s a story for another post. I bring it up here because it was at this company I was first exposed to a concept that is now commonly used in project management.

One of my coworkers laid the concept this way, on a whiteboard outside his cubicle: “You can have it fast, you can have it right, you can have it cheap. Pick any two”. Think about this for a moment, and relate it to just about anything on your to-do list. If it must be done fast, and must be done right, it will likely be expensive (example: your furnace fails at 11:00 p.m. on the night before your extended family shows up for Thanksgiving). If you want it done right and it must be done cheap, it’s going to take a while (example: growing your own vegetables). If you must have it fast and cheap, the end product will probably be less than ideal (example: the Happy Meal).

This is commonly referred to as the “Magic Triangle”, and it basically says that in any project there are tradeoffs between these three variables and that those tradeoffs must be known and accepted by all stakeholders.

The Magic Triangle

We can think of some examples where time and cost are not constraints to a quality output, but they are few and far between. If my father-in-law (ret.) wants to build a bookshelf, for instance, he can take as long as he wants. And assuming that he doesn’t want it festooned with gold leaf, he can choose whatever building materials suit him because nothing that he would typically build a bookshelf out of is cost prohibitive. The result is a really, really nice display for trinkets (because nobody reads books anymore, do they?) that will last a lifetime.

Much more common is to choose which of these three constraints is the most important and then make decisions around that choice. For leaders, this is a crucial conversation to have at the beginning of a project so that all stakeholders agree on the most important criteria to drive delivery. What is the one thing that can’t change? Is it budget (cost), schedule (time), or scope (quality)? Don’t let this question go unasked, or unanswered, and be prepared to trot out the agreement later on when one of your project stakeholders refuses to let the schedule slip and demands additional tasks be delivered without more budget (called “scope creep”).

As you can see, even though this is called the Magic Triangle there is nothing magic about it. It gives you a way to explicitly consider tradeoffs and decide the criteria for project success. It will also make your team think about whether it really is or is not critical to meet the proposed schedule, or whether a requirement for zero defects is necessary or puffery. The most important point about the Magic Triangle is that it describes physical constraints. Stakeholders with integrity will accept that rather than accuse you of offering a preemptive excuse for failure to deliver.

The Magic Triangle works at home, too. Use it sometime when the family doesn’t agree about a fundamental choice (like a big screen TV or vacation plans). Having everyone be clear about the relative importance they put on time, money and quality should prompt some very interesting and very open discussions.

Build to Last

Back in 2006 an effort was started in my hometown to build a Human Services Campus. It is an ambitious undertaking that has had successes and setbacks, and while the effort is still in the concept stage almost four years later, it is important to remember that building things to last takes time and the process can’t be rushed. I will be devoting many posts to the Human Services Campus because we have and will continue to use all of our leadership skills not only to make our local site a reality but to turn our experience into a repeatable process that can be used wherever the need for a facility like this one exists.

Today I will provide some background on what a Human Services Campus is and why it is such a compelling idea. Future posts will cover the history of the effort, the tools that have been used to move it forward, and how the experience will be captured for use by others.

What is a Human Services Campus (HSC)?
Studies on those who use social service agencies to bridge the gap between their monetary resources and their physical needs consistently draw a couple of very interesting conclusions.

The first is that users of one service typically need two or three others as well. For example, someone who visits a food bank because that is the only way to ensure the family does not go hungry may also need help paying rent, or counseling for a child having difficulty in school, or job training, or help with a family member who has drug or alcohol dependency. The list, as you can imagine, goes on.

The second conclusion is that the referral network between agencies is not very good. Because this sector is so fluid, agencies go in and out of business very quickly. A referring agency can’t be expected to keep up with the status of all potential providers and their effectiveness, so referrals may be difficult.

That’s from the agency side. How about the client side? A perfectly good referral can go to waste if the clients can’t get where they need to go. Imagine having to visit three geographically dispersed social services providers using public transportation. Weekly. Good luck.

For these reasons, and many others we will explore in the coming weeks and months, a central location with a variety of human services agencies is a very good idea. The providers can get space to suit their needs at typically below market rents, and clients have a much easier time getting multiple needs satisfied on a single visit to the campus.

The effort to site such a facility in this community has looked to a model that is already in place in Redmond, Washington. The board and staff of The Family Resource Center have been very helpful in guiding the City of Issaquah and local community and non-profit leaders to see how we can turn our vision into reality.

When we first gathered these leaders together I was able to help keep the momentum going in my role as member of the Issaquah City Council. My term has since ended, but I’m very fortunate to have been offered a seat on the Family Resource Center board, where a committee now looks at how to replicate the Human Services Campus model with an emphasis on bringing the model to Issaquah.

Creating a repeatable process for creating such a facility is the core mission of this committee, and I look forward to sharing our work with you as we continue on our journey.

Managing across the generational divide

It’s a whole new world out there for seasoned managers leading younger teams. The standard style and method of communications has radically changed in the last 20 years. Men and women entering the workforce out of high school or college face different challenges than their parents did, and their definition of success is quite different too. More experienced managers (and older workers generally) are not only called upon to absorb technology changes at an ever increasing rate, but also to collaborate with peers and subordinates who grew up in the internet age and expect their workplace to operate at hyper speed.

How smart is your phone? Do you text? Tweet? Are you available by email 24x7? You posted what on your Facebook page? Just keeping current is a challenge for everyone. Understanding how to maintain workplace productivity and reacting to the business risks posed by social networking and always-on communications are some of the biggest challenges for managers, but they are also great opportunities to share the wisdom born of experience. Here are some things managers can do to get the best out of a younger workforce.