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Author: George Pitagorsky

George Pitagorsky, integrates core disciplines and applies people centric systems and process thinking to achieve sustainable optimal performance. He is a coach, teacher and consultant. George authored The Zen Approach to Project Management, Managing Conflict and Managing Expectations and IIL’s PM Fundamentals™. He taught meditation at NY Insight Meditation Center for twenty-plus years and created the Conscious Living/Conscious Working and Wisdom in Relationships courses. Until recently, he worked as a CIO at the NYC Department of Education.
PMTimes_Nov29_2022

Star-staffing SMEs on Change and Transformation Projects

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Smart organizations assure quality results by making sure their change and transformation projects are strategically staffed with star performers. They realize that these projects influence the future for years to come. They are willing to invest the time and effort to make sure the best people are in the right places.

There are many facets to managing change projects, this article addresses project stakeholders, with an emphasis on subject matter experts (SME) and their role.

The Change Project Continuum

All projects that make significant changes to products and processes are change projects. These projects range from ones that improve existing products and processes to those that fundamentally change, transform, the way an organization functions.

The difference between simple change and transformation is like the difference between gradual maturity and the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

The Stakeholders

“Too often, the people side of change is either not addressed or not addressed adequately.”

Stakeholders are “individuals and organizations whose interests may be affected by the program outcomes, either positively or negatively.” They are sponsor(s), members of the steering committee (“board of directors,”), architect(s), SMEs, functional, product, program and project managers, engineers, technologists, facilitators, BAs, operational staff (current and future), regulators, QA, QC, administrative, and more.

While many factors contribute to the success of change projects, stakeholders are the most critical. These are the people who authorize, pay for, plan, implement, benefit from, and live with the results. All stakeholders must understand their roles and the nature of the change – the reason for it, the desired outcome, the plan to achieve it.

Subject Matter Experts (SME)

This article zeroes in on SME’s and the need to make sure their role is well understood. All stakeholders are important. SMEs are singled out because their role is often misunderstood and understaffed or given to less-than-optimal players.

SMEs help to ensure that deliverables meet the needs of stakeholders. In a transformation or major change project there are multiple SMEs with a variety of specialties. They provide detailed information, fact check, assure compliance with regulations, policies, and standards, and promote best practices. Some provide experiential knowledge of the process being changed and its environment.

SMEs possess knowledge. They are influencers, not decision makers. Decisions are made by senior program leadership using information from SMEs, architects, and others.

Technical SMEs

SMEs may be technical or content experts. The work of technical SMEs is focused on technology, legal, regulatory, financial, policy, procedural compliance, and support matters.

The technical SME role is relatively objective, but there are always interpretations. For example, deciding if a design approach complies with regulations and standards depends on an SME’s interpretation of the regulations, their flexibility, and understanding of the design.

As a project or program manager, choosing the right technical SME (if there is a choice) means finding ones who bring options and recommendations to the table rather than making arbitrary decisions.

Because technical SMEs are often working across multiple projects and may have other, operational, responsibilities, make sure their availability is adequate and that you are building SME response time estimates and realistic delays into your schedule.

 

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Content SMEs

The content SME role is far more subjective. The content SMEs’ role is to provide knowledge of the program’s current and target settings. Working with content experts, business analysts document procedures, operational history, etc. Designers and architects rely on practical feedback regarding the feasibility and potential impact of design elements.

Knowledge

SMEs provide knowledge. There are two types of knowledge, explicit (documented) and tacit (undocumented). Explicit knowledge is easy to acquire. Though it often does not reflect reality.

To obtain tacit knowledge engage subject matter experts to get the pulse of the organization, its nuances, and its staff. As a project manager beware of subject matter experts who:
• think their perception of reality is reality
• have outdated knowledge
• lack a process understanding that considers multiple perspectives
• do not realize that they represent current, and possibly, future stakeholders
• are overburdened with operational work to dedicate adequate time and attention
• do not realize the importance of their role
• Think they are in charge (though there are exceptions).

As an example, some SMEs who are in oversight positions, such as review board members “may sit in judgment … and expect their knowledge to influence content decisions. Their input may be a distraction to the process if they insist on making their influence felt on decisions that the design team and other SMEs are in a better position to make.”

Objectivity

When it comes to getting knowledge that will be used to make decisions, the goal is objectivity. Though there are always personal and organizational biases. Expect subjectivity and work to integrate it into a full decision package.

For example, a very knowledgeable SME who has been part of an organization for decades may be biased towards retaining the status quo, even though the project goal is to radically change it. An SME may not understand the power of technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics and dismiss ideas from technical SMEs, designers, and architects. Another SME might be forward looking in terms of applying technology to transform a process, but fails to address the impact on staffing and customer relations.

To promote objectivity make sure the SMEs and other stakeholders understand the need for it, and are willing to take the time and effort to elicit knowledge from stakeholders with multiple perspectives.

Star-staffing

Organizational change and transformation programs are investments in the future. They set the stage for years of operation and evolution.

Don’t scrimp on SME staffing. Put “stars” on the project. Be ready to give up key operations and management people to staff the project with SMEs who have the mindset and availability to be effective partners in the change process.

This requires dialogue among program leadership, functional and operational managers, and communication across all stakeholders to ensure that everyone is aware of the need for open-minded objectivity, their role, and how it impacts success.

 

PMTimes_Nov15_2022

Healthy Teams Achieve More

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

The carpet in an office building’s main floor elevator lobby read, T-Together E-Everyone A-Achieves M-More.

 

Having worked on many healthy teams I can attest to the power of teamwork. But then I thought, “do the teams in this organization live the slogan? Do they understand why dysfunctional teams achieve L less? Do they understand what dysfunctional teams and healthy teams are? ”

When you replace the M with an L you turn your team into a TEAL – a small freshwater duck. But joking aside, not every team does more.

Healthy teams do achieve more. Dysfunctional teams result in demoralized team members and inadequate results. So, if you want to make sure teams are healthy, that they achieve their goals, avoid unnecessary conflict, manage the necessary disagreements well, and learn from their experience, then look to the process.

 

Everyone Together

When it comes to teams, the key words are T-together and E-everyone. If the team members are together a team can achieve more than the sum of what the individual members can achieve on their own.

But what does together really mean? Team members may be together at the same time physically co-located or virtual. They may be together because someone assigned them to the team, or they joined on their own. But the most meaningful way they can be together is to mutually understand the goal, the work to be done to achieve it, and the way they will do it. Do team members have common purpose. Do they have their act together, are they sufficiently skilled and organized to achieve their goals?

And what if not E-everyone is together? If anyone on the team is not aligned with the goal, process, and values, there is an unstable foundation for team performance. The goal of storming and norming in team development is to achieve unanimity through dialogue, analysis, and negotiation.

Whether physically co-located, dispersed, or virtual, if everyone is T-Together regarding process and goal the team will be healthy.

 

Process Awareness.

The key to effective performance is to make sure team members are aware of process, both their personal process and the team’s process. Process awareness means understanding that since everything is the result of a process – a set of actions and relationships that lead to an outcome – changing the process will change the outcome.

Personal process is one’s “innerworkings.” This is the realm of mindfulness, self-awareness, psychology, emotional and social intelligence. The outcomes of the inner process are speech and behavior expressed in relationships and performance.

The team’s process includes the way the members communicate, solve problems, manage projects and products, manage relationships, conflict, and expectations, and how they critically assess performance. Values, culture, roles, responsibilities, authority, and the tools and methods to be used to achieve the goal are all part of the process.

With process awareness as a base the team can agree upon values and goals, and the tools, techniques, and procedures they will use. If they take the time and effort to assess, adapt, fine tune, and improve the process.

 

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Resistance to Process Awareness

It is difficult to argue rationally against process awareness. And yet, we find many teams that never address the way they work together.  Here is an example:

There is a small team in which one member refused to follow procedures  causing her teammates extra work and stress and resulting in delays for clients. That team had procedures but the members were not together even though they shared physical space. The team lacked effective communication, common values, and clarity about roles, responsibility, and authority. There was no meaningful performance assessment. The most important missing ingredients in this situation were communications and leadership.

 

Going Beyond the Obstacles

By confronting them, a team can go beyond these obstacles. In the end it may be necessary to change the process or to expel a team member who refuses to or is unable to come T-Together and be part of E-Everyone.

The confrontation may be initiated within the team, by client complaints, or by external management. It is motivated by the desire to improve performance and quality of life. Without confronting the issues that get in the way of optimal performance, improvement is unlikely.

 

Critical Factors

Confronting the problem involves five critical factors for improving team health: problem definition, cause analysis, performance assessment, on a foundation of candid communication and a shared value of continuous improvement.

 

Define the Problem

In our example, the problem’s symptoms are long waits by clients and frustrated team members. Frustration leads to unnecessary conflict and to a sense that management doesn’t care. More universally, the problem is team performance that can be improved.

Problem definition relies on the open communication of the symptoms. Communication is enabled by having regular performance assessments. Without that, identifying the problem requires the courage of individual team members to “blow the whistle” on issues, and risks that clients will be the “whistle blowers.”

 

Identify the Causes

There are many causes of poor team performance. For example, individuals who do not care about achieving the team’s goals, self-centeredness, not understanding roles and responsibilities, ignorance of the procedures, ineffective procedures, lack of skill, etc.

Everyone knows cause analysis is an essential part of improving performance. Yet resistance to candid cause analysis is still a great barrier to effective teamwork. This barrier is caused by sensitivities regarding personal process, blame, fear, perfectionism, and not accepting that errors are part of the process.

The sensitivities reinforce the attitude that “we don’t have time for looking at how we work, we can barely get all of our work done as it is.” This attitude is further reinforced by leadership that does not value process management and is unwilling to address interpersonal factors..

 

Apply Process Management

If you want healthy teams, look to the process. To change outcomes, change the process.

In our case example, the process was broken. Leadership failed to identify, assess, and address the problem, they had no process management process. The team members, in the absence of effective leadership, did not take initiative to raise the issue or resolve it themselves. Process awareness was missing. No-one was managing the process.

Are your teams achieving M-More? Is process awareness part of your culture? Do you take the time and effort to make sure E-Everyone is T-Together.

 

See the following articles for more on performance management:
PMTimes_Nov9_2022

Best of PMTimes: Performance Review – Don’t Hide From Project Failure, Respond To It

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Published on August 14, 2019

When you start a project you want it to succeed. But, projects fail.

 

Unless we learn from past mistakes we are destined to repeat them. To learn from the past, take a hard, unbiased and candid look at performance to discover the causes and conditions of both success and failure, document them and use them to refine your process.

I wrote about performance reviews back in 2016. Recent experience has highlighted the reality that as much as performance reviews are acknowledged to be the best way to learn from collective experience they are not always performed. This article explores the relationship between project failure and why reviews are not held and how to make them effective when they are.

Projects Fail

The article Project Management Statistics: 45 Stats You Can’t Ignore has a recent compilation of statistics regarding project performance. The article reports that project success has been rising, according to PMI and other survey sources. But, cost and schedule overruns and benefits shortfalls are still significant. For example, a “A PWC study of over 10,640 projects found that a tiny, tiny portion of companies – 2.5% – completed 100% of their projects successfully. The rest either failed to meet some of their original targets or missed the original budget or deadlines. These failures extract a heavy cost – failed IT projects alone cost the United States $50-$150B in lost revenue and productivity. (Gallup).” [2 IBID]

Responding To Failure

How do you and your organization respond to failures, or do you react? Do you make use of failures to promote ever greater probabilities of success? Or, is there fear, blaming and punishment and sweeping failures under the rug?

Some of the most successful people have said the following about failure
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” Colin Powell

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” “Failure is success in progress” Albert Einstein

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas A. Edison

The common theme is the recognition that highly intelligent and successful people accept failure and do not let it get them down. They learn from failure.

Performance Reviews

Surveys point to causes of failure and to correlations between project success and process maturity, among other factors. The surveys are useful starting points for learning. Survey data is based on a looking back at project performance to identify general tendencies.

However, to succeed, go beyond generalities. In project management, the performance review is the primary forum for learning from past performance by reflecting on how successful a project has been and the specific causes and conditions that influence success and failure. Therefore, it is a best practice to make sure project performance reviews are held and that they are effective vehicles for learning and continuous improvement.

 

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The Goal

The goal of a performance review is to identify practices that will inform future behavior. There is a commitment to continuously improve the process. Improvement comes out of the exploration of the things that have led to success and those that have contributed to failure. The focus is on the process. Lessons learned are transformed into proposed process changes.

Who doesn’t want to improve performance? Yet, there is resistance to doing the work to achieve it.

Step Back To Objectively Observe

It is highly effective to step back and objectively observe what you are doing and have done. There are two kinds of stepping back. One is so subtle and natural that you can be observing what you are doing while you are doing it. The other requires that you stop, observe and reflect.

Ideally, you as an individual are doing the subtle kind as you go through life – mindfully aware of what you are doing and adjusting your behavior as you go. The other kind of stepping back – to stop, observe and reflect – is equally important. The performance review is just that – a stepping back. Reflecting on whether what you are doing is what you think you should be doing, enables you to find the best way to proceed.

Stepping back allows you to choose and respond rather than react. When you document your observations and reflections during project life, you set yourself and your team up for a successful project performance review. When you do reflect on the current state of your project, go beyond the typical focus on deliverables, schedule and budget to include a sense of the health of relationships and levels of stress. Add questions like, Are there unproductive arguments? Are stakeholders enthusiastic? Are people happy?

Why Reviews Are Not Held

Project reviews are widely supported as the best way to learn from past performance. Yet, they are not always held and sometimes, when they are, they can be useless and boring. Why are project reviews not held? There are a number of causes interacting with one another – fear and blame, a history of useless reviews, poor facilitation, and not recognizing the value of performance review and improvement.

In one organization, a product development project’s review was held after the project was deemed a failure. The event was videotaped to make sure lessons learned were captured. Many months later, a consultant was called in to help the organization develop effective project management and performance methodologies. He discovered that the video was “lost”. It had been deemed too contentious and embarrassing.

The organization wanted to investigate how to avoid failure of future reviews and the video would have been a great starting point for that investigation. As the team remembered the event, they found that fear of confronting failure, blaming, lack of facilitation which led to the review devolving into a shouting match among a few assertive participants, and a lack of concrete factual material captured during the project were the primary factors that led to the review fiasco.

Summary

Some projects will fail. When they do, you can make the best of the situation by learning from the experience. Avoid a reaction that views failure as something to hide.

Instead, candidly review the experience, identify the causes of failure (and success) and use the lessons learned to refine procedures and guidelines for use in future projects. Remember, if you don’t learn from failure, you are likely going to repeat it.

Change the culture from one characterized by fear, blame and punishment, to one that values an open-minded view of failure and uses effective reviews and retrospectives to continuously improve. Establish an effective review process – the subject of the next article in this series.

PMTimes_Nov1_2022

Know Your Project’s Setting for Realistic Planning

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

In any project, your mindset and setting influence your experience. To plan realistically you must know the mindset of the players and the setting, the project’s environment. This article focuses on the setting, and what you can do you identify and consider environmental factors in planning.

Previous articles have addressed environmental factors from different perspectives[1]. Here we use PESTLE Analysis to identify environmental factors to better enable risk management and performance.

 

Identify the Factors

To be realistic, a plan must consider the project’s environment. For example without knowing the technology to be used and the nature of the relationships among major stakeholders, planners may be overly optimistic or pessimistic because they make unfounded assumptions; overlooking a legal requirement can have far reaching effects.

Performance can be improved in two ways, 1) by changing environmental conditions (if possible and practical) and 2) by accepting what cannot be changed and baking the impact into the plan. Both ways require that the conditions are identified. That is where environmental analysis comes in.

PESTLE Analysis is one of many models that help you to understand your project environment. Other models, for example SWOT Analysis, can be used instead of or with PESTLE analysis.

PESTLE Analysis assesses the Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors that affect project performance. The model is usually applied on the organizational level for strategic planning. Here the focus is closer to the project itself.

 

Tacit vs. Explicit

Often, there is a tacit understanding about environmental factors. With tacit understanding, there is the risk that stakeholders do not share a common perspective of the situation. Some may be unaware of some factors; others may have different views and values. Changes may have been made or are planned that make experience less useful as an anchor for predicting the future.

Explicitly identifying and analyzing the factors helps to make sure they are meaningfully addressed. This means spending time and effort on the analysis, deciding which factors are actionable, and planning accordingly.

 

Resistance

As sensible as explicitly assessing environmental factors seems, there is resistance to it. Possible causes are, the team and its leadership may not recognize the benefits, they may believe that everyone knows how things are,  and  they may take the attitude that “we can’t do anything about the environment, so why bother talking about it.” Leadership must be willing to confront the realities of their environment, including its flaws.

 

If powerful stakeholders are eager to have realistic plans, then resistance is overcome by recognizing that one of the primary reasons for chronic late and over budget projects is not taking the project environment into account. For example, a plan will be unrealistic if it is based on the assumption that a decision will be made in a month when it always takes three because there are multiple levels of decision makers, many of whom are very busy with other priorities.

 

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The Factors

The environmental factors in a PASTLE analysis are described below. The purpose of the model is to raise questions that enable project managers, and planners to identify any hidden obstacles and to consider as many factors as possible. How will these issues effect the project? Do they effect multiple projects? What can be done about them to make plans more realistic and to streamline the process?

  • P – Political:

Politics is the process of making group decisions. On a macro level, there are governmental influences in the form of regulations, taxation, international and other issues. Internal politics also have an impact on the project. Is project governance effective? Is there a political issue about the way the PMO, project managers, and functional managers perceive roles and authority? Do differences in political beliefs and allegiances cause conflict among stakeholders? Is the project goal a political issue among organizational leadership? What “old grudges” and beliefs get in the way of effective collaboration?

Political issues along with the social factors are among the most difficult to address. There is a tendency to make believe they don’t exist. There may be “hot” buttons and fear of poking a hornet’s nest.

  • E – Economic

Economic factors are both internal and external. The internal ones include the perceived cost and value of the project outcome, volatility in resource costs, budget adequacy, the project budget as a proportion of the organization’s budget. How flexible is the budget? Is there a clear expectation of financial gain? External economic factors include interest rates, volatility in the cost of resources. credit availability, and market behavior.

  • S – Social

Social factors relate to stakeholder cultural norms, values, and demographics. For example, if the team includes members from different generations or cultural groups, is there potential conflict? What is the expectation and tolerance for the “Storming” stage of team development? What is the organization’s culture? Are there multiple organizations involved? Are their cultures compatible? Explicitly the way to facilitate communication, manage conflict, and make decisions can avoid unnecessary stress and conflict.

  • Technology

On the project level technology has two dimensions: the technology used to manage the project and the technology that is part of the project deliverable. Is the technology stable? Is the technology new to users and providers? What learning curves are involved? Is there adequate support? For project management is there a platform of PM software and related productivity tools? Is the platform adding value, is it well managed and supported? How is the data managed and used? What options do you have and how will each impact performance, cost, and risk? How aligned with other projects is the technology?

  • Legal

What are the contracts, rules and regulations that effect the project? How are contracts managed? Are project staff and management subject to legal liabilities? Are there audit requirements? Are there ethical issues? Common legal issues are, copyright, patents, and intellectual property, fraud, non-disclosure, consumer protection, environmental protection, data security, health and safety, discrimination and abuse.

  • Environmental

From a project manager’s perspective project performance is effected by the project environment, the environment into which the product will go, and the broader environment with its weather, climate, geographical, factors. Project and product environmental factors overlap with the other PESTLE categories.

 

Moving Forward

Using an analytical model to assess environmental factors enhances risk management and leads to better plans and improved performance. Is your approach to identifying the factors that influence your project as good as it could be? How can it be even better?

[1] Consider the Project Environment, https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/consider-the-project-environment/  by George Pitagorsky and Understanding Enterprise Environmental Factors, https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/understanding-enterprise-environmental-factors/ by Mark Romanelli

 

PMTimes_Sep27_2022

Achieving Quality Performance and Results

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Projects are performed to deliver quality products/services and satisfy budget, and schedule expectations.  This article focuses in on quality deliverables, their relationship to quality performance, and the quality management process that seeks to ensure that quality criteria are met.

The quality of performance (the work required to deliver results) and the quality of the outcome (a service or product) are intimately related. Every outcome is the result of performance, a process. High quality performance delivers high quality outcomes. The process is the key. If it is a good one, it makes sure that quality is defined and mutually understood by stakeholders and that “critical assessment” is done with positive attitudes.

 

Quality Management

If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.
W. Edwards Deming

Quality management (QM) is a process. It is well described in PM standards, yet poorly defined quality criteria and personal reactions to critical assessment, if it is done at all, get in the way of applying quality management principles.

The goal of quality management is to improve the probability of achieving quality outcomes. It makes sure results are being developed in a way that leads to success and whether success has been achieved.

Effective quality management relies on a simple model:

  • Set quality criteria
  • Define the process for controlling quality, including roles and responsibilities
  • Assess performance against the criteria
  • Learn
  • Adjust
  • Continue.

It is a variation on the classic Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) model. So simple and rational. Yet, there is still need to raise quality consciousness and overcome the obstacles to a practical effective quality management process.

 

What Gets in the Way?

There are three primary obstacles to achieving quality outcomes: lack of clear definition of quality attributes (specifications), poor collaboration, and resistance to critical assessment. These are strongly influenced by people’s attitudes (mindset) and their setting – organizational values, processes, and relationships.

 

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Fuzzy Specs – Lack of Objective Criteria

If you and other stakeholders don’t know what quality is how can you achieve it?

Clarity and agreement regarding what you and other stakeholders mean by quality in each case, avoid subjective expectations and the inevitable conflicts that occur between those who deliver and those who receive and/or assess results. One person’s sense of quality is often not the same as another’s, so it is important to get into details about what is expected.

This obstacle seems easy to overcome. All you have to do is specify the product and performance with objective quality criteria.

But anyone with experience knows that it is not so easy. It takes time, skill, effort and most of all collaboration among performers  requirements analysts, quality management staff,  users, and clients.

For example, performance quality can be defined in terms of error or defect rates and productivity. Product quality, in terms of measurable attributes such as resiliency, duration, reliability, and customer satisfaction. Service quality can be specified with parameters for response time, customer satisfaction, etc.

Defining requirements takes time and effort. And it is hard to specify the less quantifiable quality criteria like color and texture, look and feel, refined finishing, absence of subtle flaws.

Clients often say that they’ll know quality when they see it. That tells you that when it comes to specifying quality look and feel requirements, it is best to use examples, CAD renderings, prototypes, and an agile approach.

 

Collaboration

Collaboration is the key to success. A collaborative process helps to get everyone to own the definition and to make sure that what is expected is feasible and fits within time and cost constraints. When quality specifications are set by the client without involvement of the people who must deliver and test, the stage is set for conflict and unnecessary pressure on the delivery team.

In a collaborative process, the delivery team can give feedback about the costs of quality features while clients and others can bring in cost of quality (for example the cost of errors and maintenance) to enable the team to justify costs related to higher quality. The quality control people can set expectations and engineer the best testing approach.

Together, stakeholders, deliverers, clients, quality assurance and control staff, users agree upon a set of criteria that is likely to be met with expected levels of cost, time, and effort and on the process they will use to make sure quality is achieved..

Whether you are taking an agile approach in which the team is working together to evolve the product throughout the project, a hybrid approach, or a more waterfall like approach, the time and effort required for collaborative work more than pays off by minimizing unnecessary conflict and unmet expectations.

 

Resistance to Assessment

Setting criteria is critical. Once set, assessment is a natural, obvious follow up.

How hard could that be? You just measure interim and final outcomes against quality criteria, when there is a diversion, determine cause, decide how to proceed?

However, overcoming resistance to assessment is even more difficult than overcoming the “fuzzy specs” obstacle. Here we are confronted with cultural, procedural, and psychological barriers.

The psychological level is the most important. Many people take criticism of their work as personal assault. There may be cultural issues regarding critical assessment. Some fear being fired. Old personal issues are triggered. Some fear saying something that might upset key performers and co-workers. Sometimes performers get angry at testers and reviewers when they come up with errors or performance issues.

Its complex. The secret ingredient is clear communication regarding what assessment is all about and how to do it in a way that continuously reinforces the sense that criticism is a positive thing that contributes to ever increasing quality. Acknowledge the obstacles.

If below par performance is not confronted it will continue. Individuals will not have the opportunity to learn and improve their performance. If errors and omissions are not discovered during controlled testing, they will be discovered after the product is released for use, at a far higher cost than if detected earlier.

 

Quality Process

Quality process leads to quality outcomes. We are addressing the quality management process. Its success relies on mutual understanding and collaborative effort by stakeholders. Together they address the obstacles of fuzzy specifications, lack of collaboration, and resistance to critical assessment.

Spend the time and effort on continually refining the quality management process to avoid unnecessary conflict, dissatisfaction, and poor-quality outcomes. Start with a review of your current situation – Is there a documented process? Is everyone happy with the way things are being done and the results?

 

See the article The Key to Performance Improvement: Candid Performance Assessment
https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/the-key-to-performance-improvement-candid-perfromance-assessment/