Collective Wisdom from the Experts 163
I remained certain that all the team members would pull together to finish
on time. One month before we were supposed to be going live, everyone was
reporting that their work was at least 95% done. However, when I brought in
one of our real users to try the system out, she told me in no uncertain terms,
“This is broken in so many ways, I couldn’t stand working with anything like
it.” That didn’t sound like a project 95% done to me.
An experienced project manager, Patrick, was brought in to “save the day.”
While Patrick, the project savior, (and today, my mentor) was getting things
back on track, he explained to me the fallacy of status. The customer defines
“done,” not a status report.
The fact that the database team reported 95% completion had no real bearing
on whether our users could use what we developed. Even if the status reports
looked perfect, they were giving an incorrect view of the project progress. In
short, the project was doomed, practically from day one, because I wasn’t map-
ping to the goals of the project.
I finally understood why I always needed to work with users to have them
evaluate each feature as it was created, to be sure it added customer-perceived
value. That way, the project status reports, converted to earned-value reports,
show the true percentage of earned value created rather than only showing
how much work is left.