Question :
For a government project, the bidding started three months ago. Due to various reasons, the bid failed three times, resulting in a long delay.
It was originally planned that the construction period of the first phase is three months +, and it will be launched at the end of January. However, due to the influence of bidding and bidding, the contract was signed one month ago
. It is immutable to a certain extent, and the time is fixed for some reason. How do you deal with it?
Fireball's suggestion: (my suggestion)
1. This may be the first thing to solve for the problems of various unclear requirements
. You can ask the person who is most familiar with the business in your company to make a move, or send the person with the strongest demand analysis ability to make a move.
Basic principle: if the customer doesn't know what they want, you can help him decide; sort according to the importance and dependencies of the requirements.
2. For the launch after 1 month, the customer
understands why the problem is very stuck, and who will check it when the time comes?
Generally speaking, it is normal to get stuck at a point in time, because the customer has submitted a plan to the superior, and something needs to be delivered. If this is the case, in fact, you only need to deliver something, not necessarily all of it.
If there is an important leadership inspection, you need to make trade-offs. Some necessary functions need to be implemented, but some functions can be made to achieve the demonstration effect. What is the "demonstration effect"? It can be used, but it can't be used in essence.
3. It is not feasible to sacrifice quality to ensure progress.
If you do this, you may have problems with most of the functions. It is better to give up some functions to ensure that the basic functions can be used.
For such a situation, don't expect to achieve 80 points or more, it is impossible, customer satisfaction can be 60 points. If you reluctantly agree to all requirements, you will be more dissatisfied in the end if you fail to do so, and customer satisfaction may only be 0 points!
If you are brave enough to withstand the pressure and focus your firepower to ensure that the basic functions can be used, although customers and bosses will scold you, you can at least have a score of 60.
4. It is also difficult to solve the problem by subcontracting estimation, which
may bring more management costs, communication costs and grinding costs, and it is difficult to guarantee the quality of work.
In such a short period of time, it is difficult to find a suitable supplier. In addition, our projects are generally intelligence-intensive, and it is difficult to simply violently split the work. The relationship between user stories, the bottom layer of technology and the bottom layer of the database, etc., these are not simple brute force splits that can be dealt with.
The above is so complicated, in fact, it is simply: you have to cut the range bravely! Don't care if the boss doesn't agree, stand up to the pressure, and you will suffer from the fate of the ruler outside!
One more thing to add: Regarding the shortened project time due to multiple failed bids, it
may be necessary to investigate the reason. If it is a competitor (someone) who is making a fool of himself, he deliberately compresses your project time in this way and makes you do bad projects. If these stakeholders are identified, they will definitely continue to play tricks in the future.
Doing a project is not just about doing things, it is about coordinating various people and guarding against various people. It’s really not people who do it!
Of course, it doesn't have to be so dark, but as a PM, you have to imagine the worst-case scenario.