Is the earth still flat?

Around the year 1600 or so, Galileo had gotten himself into a great deal of trouble for his theory of heliocentrism – that the sun stands still and that the earth revolves around it. So invested we were in the bible as the only truth, that Galileo was imprisoned for his heretical beliefs. His theory was so offensive that that the church banned its publication in part or whole until 1758, over 100 years after his death.

Galileo was right, of course, as we now know. But this morning I was feeling a little like Galileo as I listened to my voicemail and a sugary-sweet (read: not so thinly veiled) message that I shouldn’t share my ideas with management without first running it by other people to make sure they agree with my opinion. What if they didn’t agree with what I was saying? Would I be banned from saying it?

Dissenting opinion is a powerful thing. If you refuse to speak the party line, are you a heretic or a hero? What if you are only vindicated after you are gone? Would you still do the right thing and offer a dissenting opinion?

In Galileo’s case, his theories held true and his work would lay the foundation for the emergence of new scientific discovery. In my case, I honestly don’t know if my opinion is a fact or simply a well educated guess based on the data I can see. I don’t sit in a position where I can change the process and see if I’m right or wrong. I’m left with only the data and what I can see by poking around. But whether I’m right or wrong isn’t the important thing. I’m actually ok with being wrong as long as it is not met with silence.

Undoubtedly we have a problem with our defect rate. That is unquestioned, but where all the defects are coming from is a question. My logical conclusion is that the defects are coming from work – either new development or bug fixing. The alternate hypothesis is that all these bugs in the code have been lying around latent for years just waiting to be discovered. Each month, more bugs than we have ever seen in a single prior month come in. Yet the established dogma says “the bugs are latent in the code.” They will not hear a dissenting opinion on the topic, which is exactly what I was offering to management.

How my story turns out is irrelevant; I don’t even know the answer yet. But it isn’t important. What is important is that dissent is not suppressed where you work. Everyone agreeing never exposes any new ideas. If we all (Galileo included) just accepted that the Sun moved around the Earth, think of all the things we might not have learned. Constructive dissent (and I do stress constructive) should be rewarded, even if the dissenter is wrong. It forces us all to consider the alternatives, to push our work in new directions, to know that what we have today is not the best we can accomplish.

Hold me, I’m scared!

Fear is a terrible thing. And while some fears are justified, they are mostly overblown. Putting your fears into perspective is difficult. My first job out of college was a contact job working on the software for a blood banking system (I’m sure I’ve written about it before). Knowing you could kill someone if you screwed up the code… that’s fear! I can see how that might paralyze you from changing the code. On the other hand, if you knew something was wrong with the project, it is the same fear that would drive you to action.

In my case, the company was developing a new test for some sort of antibody screening. As I understand it, there are several types of blood products you can give the machine that it recognizes – centrifuged whole blood, plasma, or serum. For all intents and purposes, plasma and serum are interchangeable in the types of blood tests that the system could perform. However, this new test being developed for the system only worked with plasma (or serum, I can’t remember which, but it doesn’t matter except that it only worked with one of the two blood products). However, since in the entire history of tests they were interchangeable we listed the available option as “plasma OR serum.” Now, the people using the machine were supposed to know that they should only use the right product, but the machine didn’t have any warning about it.

While I knew there was something wrong with our system, I feared telling them that they needed to delay the release of their new test was going to raise their anger. Who was I to tell them? I’m not a scientist, I’m a programmer. But I swallowed deeply and expressed my concern. Their reaction was miraculous! They listened! They stopped, looked at me, thought about it for a minute, and said “you’re right. What can we do about this?” Then they invited me (a just out-of-college programmer) to meet with their scientists and discuss a solution! The collective desire to produce the best product outweighed the fear of management’s ire that we were delaying the product while we solved this problem.

So it was with some disappointment that just this other day I encountered fear at the office again. In the business I work in, no matter what we do wrong, nobody will ever die. The risks are not nearly as great, but it is still a business and there must still be a drive to do what is best – and to be ready to hear it if we are not doing the best we can.

We were in the process of reviewing a random sample of defects which we had gone back and looked for root cause. The data was pretty detailed – people seem to remember their bugs very vividly for some reason, especially high severity bugs that cause us to back out of pilots. We took all this data and we grouped it up and looked for patterns of mistakes where we could improve the process. Lo and behold, one big thing that came out was basic coding errors – the kind that could be caught by a static analysis tool like JTest. Stupid stuff. So I said to the manager we were working with “we need to go back to development and tell them they’ve got some basic coding issues.”

At first his reaction was “isn’t that kind of cliché?” I said “why? If they have basic coding issues, they’re really there and easy to work on.”

“Isn’t it quality assurance’s fault too?” the manager said.

“When’s the last time that QA ever injected a defect into the code?” I replied. “This is a development problem and it needs to be solved by development.”

“We can’t go back to development and tell them they have sloppy programmers! They have some good programmers too!” he retorted.

Alas, fear won out over doing the right thing here. The manager I was working with feared that we couldn’t go back to development and tell them they had a basic problem. It was ok if we went to them and said “you’ve got requirements issues” or “you’ve got a knowledge gap” but for some reason, if the blame fell directly on their shoulders they were unwilling to hear “you’ve got a coding problem.” We’ll never know if they would be willing to hear it, because apparently we won’t be telling them the truth of the matter on that one. We’re afraid they might react badly.

Fear of doing the right thing: 1, Us: 0.

No good deed goes unpunished

This week was the start and end of my excursion into freecycling. Freecycling is a form of recycling where instead of taking an unused item and sending it off to the dump, you find it a new home for free. It’s a bit like selling old stuff on craigslist, but without the exchange of money. Why would anyone do this if you have something of value that could be sold? I, for one, find that selling things is a total hassle and didn’t want to hold a yard sale but didn’t want things going into the dump, and I had good stuff to get rid of. So, rather than sit all day in my yard and be haggled with or put it on craigslist, I decided to freecycle it.

In theory, freecycling has economic utility for both parties. The recipient gets a useful item and the giver gets the good feeling (yes, I do truly believe this has economic utility) of seeing their item go to good use. That was, until I actually participated in this community. Plus, in theory, once you offer things you can also request things others are offering and you essentially have a brokered trade. You earn credits by offering (though credits in this case are really an honor thing) and you redeem them by taking other stuff. It’s all very hippie, people are generally good.

Instead of having a positive freecycling experience, I had a terrible one. Rather than a few grateful people I got swarmed by apparent vultures ready to swoop down on anything of remote value. I got sob stories about why they needed my item, while in return I watched people offer stuff of relatively low value (glasses, plates, old worn out stuff with some life left but not much, coupons even). The relationship was clearly not a reciprocal one. Instead, the relationship was parasitic. Well intentioned individuals offering good things (like me) saw little opportunity to get something in return – neither good feelings nor decent trades.

So I quit the group just a few days after joining. It wasn’t worth the hassle it turned out. The problem with freecycling, so far as I can tell, is that it involves an unequal relationship. Great items, which are few and far between, disappear quickly and are swarmed by tons of interested folks. The same vultures offer relatively low value items to keep up appearances of offering as much as they take, but really aren’t putting as much skin in the game.

I’m sure I’ll generate lots of angry emails about my experience, since I’m sure people (including a friend I just chatted with) have had far more positive experiences. Anyway, I’m sure you’re wondering (given the subject of my blog) what in heck this has to do with software development. Motivation.

When we pay people to show up for work, which is what we do with salaried employees, we end up with a freecycling relationship. Because these people can take more from the company than they offer in return and goals aren’t set up to assure a mutual relationship, we get slackers. And yet, for sales people, we don’t set up this relationship. We tie their pay to sales – to actually making a difference. Why do we not do this for software developers? Why do we allow an unequal relationship?

Reviews

I don’t really know what brought this to mind – like most companies this is NOT review season, which for whatever reason appears to come in the June/July time frame. It’s also not bonus season, which often coincides with Christmas or Tax Day. But I was thinking a lot about reviews lately.

There are definitely blogs that I read which are generally opposed to reviews, and the reasons are good ones. Most commonly, reviews make performance about individual accomplishment rather than group accomplishment, which isn’t necessarily the best thing for a company. I’ve seen people counteract this with individual objectives which are actually team objectives and you either succeed or fail as a team on a measure.

The problem I have with that system is that managers often feel that they should rate the individuals “contribution” towards the shared goal rather than whether the team met the shared goal or not. In essence, managers get around the idea of true shared goals by allowing people to “succeed” even when the whole has failed.

But it wasn’t really the thing I was thinking about. What I was thinking about was the rating systems and distributions. Several companies I have been at have used the N-P-E-O scale (needs improvement, proficient, exceeds expectations, outstanding) for ratings.

The problem is, they never define what N, P, E or O means. I mean, they give a definition, but it leaves out one key element especially on the high side. If someone “exceeds expectations” does that mean that they exceed what you expect of that person or what you would expect of any person in the role? I’ve seen it used both ways, but I only agree with the latter definition. To use the first definition puts you into two problem areas: one, if you have a low performer who surprises you (in a good way) should you rate them as having exceeded expectations for that item? After all, your expectations of them were very low, so the great result is indeed exceeding your expectations. On the other hand, what if you have a high performer? If they blow you away the first time, so you rate them an outstanding, is the bar for that person now set at outstanding? Can they never impress you again?

These aren’t silly theoretical ideas… I’ve seen both examples in practice. As far as I’m concerned, you must define an expected standard for the job and each person should be rated as to whether they are below, at, or above that definition in performance. More importantly, if you don’t have a definition, then you can ascertain a definition by looking at the real distribution in capability of your existing workforce. The alternative definition applies an unequal scale, encouraging bad strategies for your employees. On one end, you have sandbaggers who keep expectations low so the can occasionally surprise you. On the other hand, you have demotivated employees who can’t ever seem to please you anymore.

Now, there’s one other aspect to this, I believe. If you haven’t defined an expectation for the job, you cannot do reviews. You can’t say that someone exceeds expectations if you have no idea what exactly the expectation is. In addition, the possibility exists, that despite there being variation person-to-person, that even the best person you have is below expected performance for the standard you set for the job. Just because a person is better than all others in the group does not automatically make them outstanding. They may be barely proficient and the rest need improvements. But just because someone blows you away compared to their peers doesn’t make them an outstanding performer.

I know that many blogs have covered this topic before, and they may not agree with me, but if I ever get back round to being in management again, having now given it several days of thought (and you think I just rattle off a blog entry whenever one comes to mind), I believe this is the model that I will adopt.

The inmates are running the asylum

I spent the other day in an all-day meeting where the team I’m on was basically asked “what business are we in?” I can see how this is a good question to ask any small company, but I’m not so sure this question applies when you are a cost center in a big company.

We exist because some other team has deemed it worthwhile to have us provide a certain set of services. It really isn’t up to us what business we want to be in. In our case, the team is there to develop and streamline processes. We were given that job in no uncertain terms. It doesn’t need to be defined anew.

So is “what business are we in?” a good question to ask your team? On one hand, reminding people that even though we are a subset of a larger business, we still need to run ourselves like a business has value. It is our job to provide valuable services and in that spirit we need to be sure we are providing competitive results – as good as, if not better, than the results that our customers would get from going elsewhere. It is good to own your own goals, to believe you helped build the processes and team.

On the other hand, if you have to ask your team what your mission is, what your vision is, and what your values are then haven’t you relinquished your leadership role in the team? After all, the manager or leader (they’re not always the same person) needs to exude the characteristics that the entire team will live by. To say to your team “what are your values?” may simply encourage inertia. Part of your job as the leader is to evaluate whether the existing culture and values are the right ones to have. If not, whatever values the team is currently living by have to change.

Case in point, at one company I worked for the team had an “always say yes” and “results are more important than the path there” attitude. This resulted in over committing and then really suffering on their way to deliver whatever it was they committed to. Not only did they not understand what their available supply was, but they didn’t care that each and every endeavor was painful. They lived day-to-day, with no thought of what the impact would be on tomorrow’s projects. As the leader of that team it was my job to come in and say “No. This isn’t in our customer’s best interests and isn’t in our own interests.” We needed a handful of core values which would not be compromised for anything.

The major value I shared with that team was “quality first.” It was unacceptable to me to deliver poor quality to our users, and I would stand behind anyone who said “I cannot deliver the quality you deserve in these circumstances.” Yes, having core values might appear to annoy your customer, but in the practice the typically short extra wait to make sure it was done right instead of just quickly was well received. Had I gone to that team and asked them what their values were, I don’t think “quality first” would have come up.

I don’t wholly object to involving your team to envision a better future for itself, but it should be done with the consideration that not everyone has that visioning capability and not everyone wants to lead. There’s nothing wrong with being a solid, capable worker. Leading is a burden as much as it is a reward, and it is understandable that not everyone wants to take it on. I’d suggest thinking twice about whether it is really the best route to let the team decide, or whether as the leader, you can model values that you want the team to have and watch them appear all on their own – no silly all-day-visioning-sessions needed.

They can’t make it work, so it’s exactly why it’ll work for us…

I happen to be a Democrat, but I enjoy reading commentary from both sides of the aisle.  Today I was reading this particularly ridiculous piece written by a Republican commentator.  Mr. Feehery feels that the splintered nature of the Democratic party is an opportunity for Republicans.  His argument goes something like:  our party’s values are small government, social conservatism, rigid enforcement of immigration law.  The Democrats are large governement, socially liberal, loose on immigration.  Therefore, since the Southern Democrats, Hispanics and African Americans aren’t as socially liberal as those
liberal nutjobs in Washington, they could be part of our party.  We could win them over! 

Of course, for each of the reasons the Republicans might win them over, it’s their current platform that also drives them away.  The Hispanic population isn’t generally a fan of tough immigration laws, African Americans have been ignored by Republicans, and while socially conservative, the Southern Democrats presumably still believe in a strong central government.

Even were I totally off on why each demographic will and won’t shift between parties, if the Republicans managed to attract these demographics, they’d be in the same position that Mr. Feehery claims the Democrats are now in.  They’d suddenly have people in their party who didn’t match the current party platform: socially conservative, fiscally conservative, pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-immigration.  Mr. Feehrey is a victim of survivorship bias.  He looks at his party and says “hey, we’re all aligned” but that’s because largely the people left in his party are those that shared the very narrow party platform.  Everyone else, the “non-survivors”, have been driven out.

So, sure, Democrats have a splintered party and they must sometimes compromise to maintain their voting bloc.  This somehow makes the alternative that the Republicans (who he superbly understates as “having their fair share of problems”) are offering workable?  Hey, these people didn’t vote for you for some reason… presumably because the things that the party ideals were against outweighed the elements of the party that people were for.

Which is the case with me, I’d probably be a Republican (I LOVE fiscal conservatism) except that Republicans are a disaster (in my opinion) on personal liberties.  I have chosen larger government, and more taxes, as an acceptable evil in exchange for a party that is willing to provide more social freedoms.  Anyway, I digress…

If you’ve got a situation which you deride someone else for failing at (or setting themselves up for failure at), and think that it’d work for you… take another looksie.  If it is failing, it is failing for a reason.  Just cause you could be running the show instead of them doesn’t get rid of the underlying problem.  This commentator’s entire argument appears to be “the pendulum will swing back” and from that one can reasonably conclude that it’d swing back yet again after that, and again, and again, and again, because nobody is actually solving the problem of why the splintered party doesn’t work.

Maybe it’d be better to be a minority, but at least a unified minority.  Maybe it’d be better to serve some customers really well than to serve many customers marginally…

10 Signs that your X is good/bad/etc.

Note:  My apologies.  I wrote this post from a Mac, and it seems to have lost lots of content in the middle plus screwed up the title.  I have no idea why, but I guess that’s the last time I’ll do that.  I’ve done my best to fix it.

My father in law is a psychologist.  I find it fascinating, since he has so many great stories about treating couples.  I love a good medical story.  So it was a strange coincidence that we (my wife, daughter and I) were visiting them for the weekend AND at the same time I was helping my brother develop a new website.

As I was showing off the website design to my father in law, he said “I’ve got this great site which I think is a great example of good design.”  And with that he sent me off to relational-coaching.com where I stumbled upon this article. 10 signs of a great relationship, huh?

I’m not qualified to decide whether she’s right or wrong, or whether 10 things is the right number of things, but it did get me thinking.  All the time we run into top N lists.  They appear to come in certain flavors:

1. Top Ten lists
2. Top Five lists
3. Top Seven lists (thanks very much Steven Covey).  Though I think the association with lucky 7 might have something to do with it
4. Top 50
5. Top 100
6. Plus 1 lists (ie 101 top things instead of 100)

Sometimes a list of 3, but it’s odd to see a list of 27, for example.  Whatever has caused us to gravitate to lists of N items, and why 3, 5, 7, 10, 50 and 100 have become those lengths, I don’t understand.

I know, I know, so what?  Well, in our efforts to make nice “round” number lists, are we missing something important?

I see it all the time at work.  For example, the other day I was given a list of the Top 5 projects.  But why not the top 6 or top 7?  Someone chose 5, but was it a logical break point?  No, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t.  There can be 300 or more projects at any moment active, but a scant few of them are really large (say greater than 1 million in spend).  And 1M in spend would be arbitrary too, but there is a break point.  Generally, we see little projects, those under $.5 M, almost nothing in the $.5M to $1M space, and then projects $>1M.  So the >$1M break point makes some sense.  Anyway, there were, oh I don’t remember, 32 projects >$1M.  

But still we do top 5.  The convenience of having settled on these numbers (3, 5, 10…) should not outweigh a look at your data to see if there’s a logical place to say “this group looks different from that group.”  If you want to talk about “the big stuff” then figure out what it really means to be “big” and set the criteria that way.

Had the situation been different and we had a continuous range of projects costs from 0 through >$1M, you’d need to do some hard thinking about where to segregate the populations, if you should even segregate at all.

Don’t pick the top N because it feels familiar.  Pick the top N only if it makes sense.  And don’t assume that N has to be one of 3, 5, 10 and so on.  If it’s 27 items, so be it.

Leaner today

My wife and I are attending a wedding in the next few weeks. That’s a generally unremarkable occurrence. We’re about the age where our friends are getting married and starting to think about kids. In fact, I generally dread the events since we’ve been to so many and each one costing us a gift, a hotel room for a night or two, a sitter for our daughter, yet another new dress for my wife, and the list goes on…

Going to weddings is expensive. At any rate, we had not actually been to a wedding in quite a while. I have recently lost some weight, so I decided to try on my suit and make sure it still fit. Alas, it did not, so adding to this wedding’s tab will be a tailoring of my suit.

At my lunch break I popped down to the local tailor (who is just the stereotype I imagined sitting in his little shop with his thick eastern European accent). He has me put on my suit and stand up on the little, what do you call it, soapbox, I guess, to have a look see. I mention in passing that I’ve lost some weight recently.

He’s kind of tugging here and there, getting a sense for it, mumbles something under his breath about it being a nice suit (which I appreciate). Eventually he looks up at me and says “you’ve lost 30 or 40 pounds, no?” I smile. Hey, just because I’m a guy doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate this compliment.

“No, ” I reply, “I don’t think that much.”

“Ah, it must have been a little too large to begin with.”

“Hmph,” I think. Some nerve. First he compliments my weight loss (which I admit I had not lost 30 or 40 pounds – or at least I don’t think so)  and then suddenly it’s a suit that was always too large…

Too large to begin with, eh?  That reminds me of something. Measurements! Recently at work, someone asked me how we compared to our competitors in regards to development efficiency. Setting aside the fact that nobody can agree on exactly how we should measure efficiency, I reply “what does it matter?”

“Well don’t you want to know how we’re doing?”

“Is our customer happy with our performance, “ I ask.

“No.”

“Then it doesn’t matter how our competitors are doing.  We are not doing well enough.”

It’s like my suit. Sure, I’m too small for my suit to begin with. Compared to my suit, I am leaner than the suit would hold, but am I happy with my weight? I guess I’m ok with it, but I could stand to lose a few more pounds.

By comparison, we may be better than our competitors when it comes to development efficiency. The suit sized for our competitors is too big for us, so to speak. Alas, it doesn’t matter, because the customer (or in the case of my suit, my wife) doesn’t really care that you are good in comparison. Sure, I guess maybe my wife is glad that I’m not the thousand pound or five hundred pound or even two hundred pound man coming down the street, but I still could be a bit leaner than I am. And so can your company. It’s not success just because you beat everyone else. If it isn’t good enough for your customer, it isn’t good enough.

Which came first the fun or the fun committee?

The other day someone asked me if I’d be interesting in joining the team’s fun committee.  I declined.  For a couple of reasons – one, I don’t find being on fun committees much fun.  I don’t get any of my normal work taken away to plan events so it is just extra work.  I don’t need extra work.

But more importantly, it dawned on me why the idea of a fun committee was intrinsically doomed to failure.  When organizations aren’t performing well, people often (correctly) recognize that the ability and willingness of the team to work together is lacking.  Work gets reduced to a series of cover your a** conversations, documents, email trails and so on.  We exchange productivity for busy work.

And thus people dawn up the idea of improving morale and helping the team work together.  They form fun committees!  The thing is, if you team was having fun, you wouldn’t need a fun committee and the fact that you have one means you’re already in a tough spot.  Why did you create a fun committee?  We don’t do it because we genuinely believe it is fun.  We do it because we think the organization will get value from it.  And thus the goal is all wrong.

Yes, the organization does get value from a team who likes to be together, but you can’t make teams more productive by forcing them to have ‘fun’ together.  Sure, people may even enjoy the free lunches, beer or whatever else.  They may show up and socialize with each other, but it doesn’t build what you a really looking for, a shared sense of purpose and trust in each other.

People who have common mindsets form groups all the time in the real world.  They’re called friends!  But these friendships stem from the fact that the people in them want the same types of things – whether they rally around a certain sporting event, a hobby, or even just a good stiff drink.  And having found friendship, these people are inclined to do more for each other and also receive personal satisfaction from doing it.

But there are lots of cases where people get together, have a good time for a moment and never interact afterwards.  They’re called parties.  The relationship is fleeting, and while I may enjoy your company, once the party is over I am unlikely to think of you again.  Fun committees make the equivalent of parties, not friendships.  We may be all in the same place together sharing an experience, but I don’t feel more strongly for you from having done it.

If you’re thinking about a fun committee, I think you’ve already gone down a bad path.  Think instead about the things as a leader you are doing to prevent your team from gelling.  Are you isolating them, suppressing them, enforcing an hierarchy that need not be there?  Do you berate them for their failures but never reward their successes?  Do you over-reward (patronize) them for minor wins rather than great things?

Teams can function without gelling.  I still believe that good process is critical, even in a well functioning team.  However, it can only help to have a well functioning team, so why act to destroy it?  And that’s what is most important to understand.  You can’t make a team gell by having a fun-committee, but there’s a lot you can do to destroy them coming together on their own around whatever it is they feel is fun.

Underpromising and overdelivering, not such a good idea

Back in December, after the horrid experience I had with the local power company, I wrote a post about communicating when all else fails.  In it I discussed a variety of ways in which communication could have been greatly improved.  But, as I was thinking the other day, there was one point that I alluded to that has more relevence in the business world than some of the others.  “Underpromise and overdeliver.”  If you haven’t said it yourself, you’ve probably heard it from someone.

The idea seems ok on the surface.  If I say to you “you’ll have it by Friday” and then I give it to you on Tuesday, how unhappy will you really be?  I mean, after all, you were OK with getting it Friday, so early delivery should make you excited, right?  Wrong!

Let’s return to the ice storm.  The message we were given was “power will be restored by the end of the week.”  There’s something like, who knows, 20,000 people in my town.  So how true is that statement for most people?  In it’s most generous of meanings, that statement is true: you will most likely have power restored by the end of the week.  But, for most people the statement is also false.  In fact, your chances are really good that you will have power well before then.  The act of fixing the power grid is a right skewed curve, like this:

Why is this interesting?  Well, the morning after the storm, almost nobody has power, but then the crews work immediately on the main lines.  Once they get the main lines back up, power is quickly restored to many people, hence the quick rise in the curve.  Indeed, the pace of recovery is quite quick, perhaps only a day or two for most people.  In reality, 55% of the town had power by the evening of the third day.  And yet, it took almost 12 days for the last people to get power back.  Clearly, the probability that you’d have power back by day X had a very long right tail.  Some people, a very few, were in the cold a long time.  Most of us were not.

Well, so what, you say?  What’s the big deal that the town underpromised 60-70% of their residents and overdelivered?  I’ll tell you what the big deal is.  Money and lots of it!

Every day you are without power you have to make a choice – if I stay here, what are the chances that I’ll get power back?  If the odds aren’t good, well, you make certain financial decisions.  On day two, because the town employees were still saying “end of the week” I went out and spent several hundred on a generator for my home.  Other people spent nights in hotels.  That might be $150 or more a night AND if you didn’t really need the room but you occupy it (i.e. use the resource unnecessarily), then you deny someone else who does need it access to a warm place to sleep.  So, how acceptable would it have been to me if on day two someone told me “end of the week” and then I drove home with the generator, used it for a little on the expectation that I’d need it for several days, and power came on three hours later?  I’d be furious, that’s how I’d feel!  By the way, you can’t return a used generator… stores don’t allow it because they don’t want to become a generator rental company during major outages.  If you spend the money, it’s yours to keep.

Well guess what, as a systems organization, it’s the same deal.  When you underpromise to your customers and then overdeliver, how do you know that they haven’t made an expensive financial decision based on when you said you could deliver it?  Maybe they retained extra staff to do the work manually until you automated the process.  Now they’re paying for people they don’t need.  Maybe they bought extra hardware to cover until you could resolve your performance issues.  Great, now they own hardware that they wouldn’t have otherwise bought.

Sure, underpromising and overdelivering means you’re never late, but that doesn’t mean you’ve done your customer a favor.  Underpromising is as much a lie as overpromising.  PROMISE and DELIVER!