Lessons From the World's Best Project Managers
How many times have you said, “I wish I knew then what I know now”? Many a project manager has had the same thought. We asked the managers behind big ventures, including the development of the battery for General Motors’ Chevy Volt, Facebook’s home page redesigns, and Method’s growing line of green cleaning products, for the most important lesson they’ve learned for launching projects with maximum success.
The perfect is the enemy of the deadline.
When we had to build the hardware for our fourth major design iteration of the Chevy Volt battery, we were working closely with our suppliers and realized we needed a three-month delay to do it. They said, “That’s inconceivable. You can’t do a whole redesign in three months.” There were a lot of shocked faces in the room when we said we weren’t going to stop. What do you do? One, you work harder. I didn’t sleep a lot — that’s the obvious part. Two, you scale back expectations. You’re better off doing 95 percent on time than 100 percent late. When you’re late, nothing happens: The battery isn’t in the car and you’re not learning anything. We made the date with about 98 percent complete.— Bill Wallace, engineering group manager for GM’s Volt battery
Posted by Scott Schwartz
