I forgot to mention this. Early this month, we moved to our new facility. This is quite a distance for me. Though, the surrounding is better compared to where we were earlier, the facility itself was disappointing. Here is our new office building.

novell

and a new meeting room, where we can have our standup meetings.
scrum_room

Many of our executives came down for the inauguration of this building, including our CEO, Ron Hovsepian.

Plans to move to a new facility was announced in last February and it was mentioned that we will move to a new facility by next April. I must admit that the people managed this project kept their words and we were in our new facility in this April. What caught my attention is a mention about comparing Software projects with bringing up a facility like this during an opening address by our MD, Naresh Shah. He stated that our project managers should learn a lesson from this.

And, that made me think. What are our common excuses for schedule slippage?

  • Changing requirements
  • Technical challenges or change in technology
  • Slack in dependency management
  • People
  • Pressure in giving a schedule before you study the project

Now look at this scenario. Don’t you go back to your architect with a new idea when you construct a house or other buildings? How much does he accommodate? Don’t you think there are challenges when you construct a house such as new materials, delay in getting cement, steel etc. More over, handling construction work at Bangalore is another challenge where you can’t get anything done on time unless you sit with the workers.

On the other hand, I think I can always deliver the project on time, if

  • I decide what the customer needs
  • No beta deliveries and no feedback from customers
  • Customers don’t have a choice but to use my software
  • I deliver the project on the scheduled date in what ever condition it is and the customer is forced to use the product with or without my help
  • I will continue to build and deliver my product with no communication, though the customer has deployed the product in his production environment.

Do you think all projects will be successful in such a scenario?