Notes from 50st International STC Conference
Baltimore, Maryland, May 9-12, 2004

Good, Fast, and Cheap – a Balancing Act

Jacqueline E. Sirota, Suzanne A. Hosie, and Kathleen W. Pierce
Write on the Edge, Inc.

Session Description: This interactive workshop demonstrated how to balance the three sides of the quality triangle—quality, schedule, and budget. The presenters discussed several methods for achieving this balance.

• Introduction: the quality vs schedule vs dilemma
• Customers need us to:
   
• Produce a quality product
• Meet the schedule
• Charge a fair price
• The quality triangle has quality, schedule, and budget as the three corners.
• Balancing quality, schedule, and budget
   
• Understand and respect your stakeholders' priorities/concerns
• Know your stakeholders' definition of quality, schedule, and budget
• Consider your standards
• Emphasize teamwork
• Escalate issues appropriately
• Evaluate often and adjust accordingly
• Must balance the needs of all the stakeholders ... and Information Products (the communications team) is in the middle
   
• Quality Assurance (produce zero defects)
• Customer Support (address problems)
• Users (answer specific questions)
• Localization use (use simple design and writing style)
• R&D (describe features)
• Management (keep everyone happy)
• Marketing (sell the product)
• Human Factors (describe the UI)
• Printing (use simple design)
• Manufacturing (keep costs low)
• Quality takes planning
   
• Templates
• Style guide and consistency list
• Training
• Editing
• User testing
• Hiring (note that this manager sees the resume as a sample of the person's work)
• Quality is relative
• Customer
   
• No customer complaints
• No technical problems
• Positive write-up in industry publications
• Nice cover or jargon like "PDF" or "CM"
• On time, on budget!
• Tech writer
   
• Technically accurate
• Task oriented
• Consistent
• Indexed
• Well written
• Well designed
• In the right tool
• Quality takes teamwork: work with the project manager
• Research shows that it took employees more than 7 times longer to perform tasks on a poorly designed intranet than on a well-designed one.
• Quality is bigger than you think
   
• Improve process
• Improve teamwork
• Reduce time
• Capture best practices
• Include new types of information
• Build relationships
• Build on customer requests
• Conduct user tests
• Quality takes time ... quality is a process, not a destination
   
• Let relationships mature
• Don't think "no"; think "Version 2"
• Goal: continuous improvement, not perfection
• Scheduling the project
   
• Develop standards and implement a project management approach
• Get input
• Think creatively about schedule, resources, and tools
• Be flexible and evaluate often
• Create the schedule
   
• Milestones
• Deliverables
• Tasks
• Develop standards and establish PM approach
• Develop scheduling standards
• Implement a project management approach
   
• Plan (project plan, schedule, resources, budget, quality)
• Control and monitor (track and schedule changes, resolve issues, modify scope)
• Close
• Think creatively about schedule, resources, and tools
• Look at each task to see how you can do things more creatively and efficiently
   
• Single sourcing
• Sequentially
• Concurrently
• Staggered
• Consider best tool for each deliverable
• Be flexible, evaluate often, expect change
• Get input
   
• Get input so that you understand your stakeholders' priorities/concerns/definition of scheduling
• Get team input
• Review lessons learned and best practices
• Review metrics
• Determine where there is room for flexibility
• Establishing the budget: use previous data to estimate budget
   
• Book metrics are OK
• Your metrics are better
• Especially if the client/project is the same
• If the schedule changes, the budget must change.
• Track your time carefully
   
• So you know how much time was spent
• In case you need to justify it later
• Easier to track as you go than to re-create time records later
• Gives you metrics for future projects
• Evaluate budget often
   
• When there's a quality or schedule issue
• When there's scope creep
• When it's close to max (not after)
• Provide status reports: give frequent status
   
• Monitor budget constantly
• Report budget weekly on hourly projects
• Offer suggestions for efficiency
• Communicate budget ramifications when customers ask for changes, not after the work is done
• Price services fairly
• Work on a fixed price
   
• Takes focus off budget
• You can make more per hour this way
• Need to monitor scope (creep) closely
• Be prepared to do change notices