Is "Lazy Creep" Similar to "Mission Creep?"

Thursday, January 21, 2010
I'm sure you're all familiar with "mission creep," especially you project managers out there. It's essentially the phenomenon whereby additional goals are added to an existing project or mission, usually as a result of the project or mission team having a good amount of success. In other words, if that horse runs, run it until it drops dead of exhaustion. What could go wrong?

I've been a presales system engineer since 2001, and I've found that in my own work, the danger is not so much mission creep as "lazy creep." After you've done a job for so many years, it's easy to cut corners. It's easy to try and keep specifications in your head, instead of documenting requirements and following an established process. It's easy to assume that those around you are just as familiar with the solution or product as you are.

After nine years of this, what I've discovered is that this way lies ruin.

Documentation, process and communication are the building blocks of successful technology deployment, and I cut corners in these areas at my peril. I know this. I've lived the consequences of cutting corners. And yet, every couple of years, I have to kick myself in the ass to ensure I don't get lazy and sabotage my own efforts.

Here's what I need to remember:

Taking the time to document and prepare my deliverables in a deliberate, methodical manner is not only to my benefit, but to the benefit of everyone involved in the project. It takes me longer to do it right and document everything - that's just the way it is. And the extra time I take leads to customers bitching and crying about how long it takes me to provide the deliverable. But really, I'd rather listen to them whining about speed than to give them legitimate reason to complain about the quality of what I provide if I miss something, or if an incomplete deliverable leads to another team member missing something.

You can have it fast, or you can have it right. You can't have both, and the occasions when I've allowed myself to be pressured into doing it fast usually result in my being sorry for having done so.

Learning lessons over and over and over - it's like I live and work in Groundhog Day...

7 comments:

mom in northern said...

This all related to the MAD COW don't you know...

Karl said...

hehheh - I do database and work management programming here, as well as IT shop stuff and I can totally relate to this - documentation is one of our big efforts here.

But I also have a sign up in my office for customers that says:

You can have it:
Quick
Cheap
Good

Pick 2

Janiece said...

Karl, I'm afraid I can't do the "quick and good" combo, darn the luck...

WendyB_09 said...

You can have it fast, or you can have it right. You can't have both...

Now if I just had a nickel for every time I've said that to a boss, I could take early retirement to a beach somewhere.

When I was getting my IS degree, my prof's drilled documentation into our brains. Woe to you if you didn't document something obscure in a project or exam.

Strange as it is, the first thing the business world tries to get you to unlearn after you graduate is...documentation! It doesn't matter if it's a computer programming or research on matters of legal code, if it takes time they want you to cut it out! Ugh.

But, I persist. You should see the email to my law office tech support guy listing the steps I took and results I got yesterday trying to identify one weird Windows software problem we're having. You'd have been so proud.

MWT said...

You can have it fast, but only if you don't mind that it comes back and you have to do it again a second time, this time right, thereby taking up at least twice as much time as if you'd done it right the first time... in short: fast is an illusion. ;)

Random Michelle K said...

Well, it's not that fast is an illusion. It's simply that fast requires multiple individuals working on the project--and working overtime.

Steve Buchheit said...

Or as we say on the print floor, "There'll always be time to do it right the second time around."