At the start of a project, the timelines look good, the schedules may be aggressive, and optimism is high. People enjoy a fresh start, and the work begins. However, as time goes on, the Project Manager realizes that the schedule was unrealistic, or perhaps something unexpected came up, and now the project is a month behind. Suddenly, the client is clamoring for status updates, and wants to know why the project is late.

As a Project Manager, what do you do?

In order to answer this question, the first step is to understand the various reasons why a schedule might slip, since that can affect how to resolve the issue.

1. The initial schedule was never accurate. It was overly aggressive, and did not allow for unforeseen problems. As a general rule-of-thumb, there should be about a 20% allowance for unforeseen difficulties. Additionally, the people doing the work should be involved in creating the schedule, since they will be the ones expected to adhere to that schedule.
2. The schedule was sufficiently conservative, but a delay from a third party held up progress. Once the third party delivers, the schedule will be back on track, although pushed out by the length of the delay. The third party could be a resource for either the vendor or the client.
3. The schedule was sufficiently conservative, but changes to scope caused the schedule to break.
4. The scope did not change, but the amount of work required for some portion of the project was not estimated correctly and this was only determined once the work began.

The first step in resolving a problem with the schedule is communication. The client should be informed:

1. There has been a delay in the project, and what the new schedule is
2. What caused the delay, and whether or not another delay for a similar reason can be expected during the remainder of the project

Once the client has been informed of the new schedule, the relationship with the client must be repaired. Depending on the nature of the delay and the ultimate cost to the client, how the relationship is repaired will vary.

If the cost to the client can be measured with a dollar value, then that cost should be, to some extent, reimbursed to the client if the vendor was the source of the delay. However, this situation is not that common as making such a measurement is fairly difficult, and may not be determinable until after the project is complete.

In most cases, offer the client some form of compensation for the delay, with the amount depending on the nature and severity of the delay. Clearly, a single day delay is not as severe as a month delay. However, if that single day means that the client misses an industry deadline, the severity is greatly increased.

One form of compensation that allows for an opportunity to repair the relationship fully is to offer a discount on future work. For example, if the vendor was supplying a website, they can offer a discount on future maintenance, for example, a 10% reduction in the hourly rate for the first 50 hours of maintenance.

What is clear, regardless of the nature of the delay, is that the relationship between the client and the vendor will need repair. What should not be done is to attempt to hide or deny the delay – the client will eventually find out, and then trust will be lost. By being honest about the schedule, and keeping open lines of communication, you can work with the client to bring the project to a successful close. Your practices in dealing with delays will assist in future goodwill, as clients tend to appreciate when vendors are honest about schedules, and take appropriate action to adhere to them.

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1. The Customer is Always Right… Sometimes
2. Slow Economy and Developing a New Business
3. My Guarantee

At a small networking event, you will have the opportunity to speak to every person in the room. I now know how 30 people can help others, and how I can help them. In a larger group, I find that you get caught in a much smaller group of people with whom you talk at length, and don’t learn anything about the majority of the people in the room.

The second benefit to the evening was the ability to reconnect with several people whom I had met at the first Parnasa Fest, and speak to some of them for a little longer than I had before. This is one of the benefits to holding a series of events, as it provides the opportunity to really grow your network by establishing a relationship of sorts with people I would be unlikely to meet otherwise.

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1. Parnasa Fest 2
2. Parnasa Fest Toronto 2
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Of course, you will need to find a mentor, and understand how to evaluate the benefits and risk you will gain as a result of pairing up with a mentor.

A mentor for a business is typically a leader, or former leader, of another business. They have succeeded in the past, and are willing to contribute their time and knowledge to help others succeed as well. This gives you the first item to check out – what has your potential mentor done in the past?

You want to find a mentor who understands your business to some degree. While any successful CEO might be able to provide good business advice, you should try to find someone who succeeded in an industry similar to your own. If you are in manufacturing, some of your issues will be unique to that industry. The owner of a service-providing company will not be able to provide you with sufficient advice regarding those issues.

In my case, I provide a service in the technology sector. If I were trying to find a mentor, I would want someone who:

• Worked in technology
• Worked with services
• Worked with consultants
• Worked with small businesses
• Started a business from nothing

The ideal mentor may not be the most well-known person, but he or she would be able to provide advice in all the categories listed above. After all, the issues I will be facing will fit into one or more of those categories, so the best advice I can get will be from someone who has experience in those categories.

In looking for a mentor, look to government programs, or your local Chamber of Commerce. Many provide the service of linking small business owners and entrepreneurs with mentors. As well, if you use Linked In, you may be able to locate a mentor by asking for one (use their Questions and Answers feature).

If you have other ideas or recommendations regarding mentorship for small businesses, please comment! I look forward to reading your ideas!

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3. What would you like me to write about

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Your e-mail is no different. There is the large volume of spam. The joke your cousin e-mailed you (which has been circulating for two years, and you’ve read it three times before). A message from an university friend trying to arrange a visit. Newsletters from several magazines you read on a regular basis. An urgent request from a client for some data. The list continues.

To maintain a semblance of control over your inbox, you may want to try implementing the following strategy. If you have other suggestions for dealing with large volumes of mail, please let me know.

1. Maintain separate e-mail addresses for personal and business, and be strict about it. I have 5 e-mail addresses that I actively maintain, and each serves a different purpose. One is for personal, one is my company e-mail address, one is provided by my employer, one is for mailing lists, and one is for business not part of any regular work (for example, messages from this blog). The lines between the addresses are strict, and it helps filter the level of importance for each e-mail immediately.
2. Clean your inbox daily. This means reading each e-mail, either responding immediately if required, or marking it for further attention later.
3. Use folders or labels for organizing the e-mails you have already read. I personally prefer the Google model of using labels, as some e-mails may need to be referenced from multiple categories.
4. Set aside time each day to deal with your e-mail. If the volume is high enough, you may need to do this multiple times during the day. During those windows, deal with the high-importance e-mails and leave the others for later. Then set aside a time at the end of each day to read through the remaining e-mails.
5. Check your e-mail frequently for new messages, or set up a notification process. Google has an application called Gmail Notifier which will show the first few lines of each incoming message as it arrives. Outlook will do the same. This prevents the build-up of high importance e-mails.
6. Check your spam folder daily to ensure there are no real messages mixed in, and then empty the folder.
7. If you read a message, and there is a quick response to it, do it immediately, even if it’s not very important. That takes it off your list of things to do.

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I don’t always work under contract, although the exceptions to that rule are becoming few and far between. A contract is binding on both parties, and it is in your best interest to always have one. Here are a few examples of how you, as the contract worker, benefit from that piece of paper:

• Guaranteed rate: no more arguing about how much you are entitled to
• Guaranteed work: no more changing requirements and trying to claim you agreed to do so in the initial work agreement
• Guaranteed responsibility: no more wondering about who owns what at the end of the project

From the client’s perspective, a contract is likewise of immense benefit:

• Guaranteed rate: no more arguing about how much you owe for the work
• Guaranteed work: no more hidden fees for work you asked for initially
• Guaranteed responsibility: no more wondering about who owns what at the end of the project

Additionally, a contract can include additional information regarding maintenance costs, support after the project is complete, and dates for completion. As a client, you may want to include information about what happens if a date is missed. As a contractor, you may want to specify what happens if payments are late.

The reason I occassionally work without a contract is simple. Looking through dozens of templates online, it is difficult to locate the appropriate contract for your location and the specific work you are doing. However, recently, I was sent 6 contract agreements for my current jurisdiction (Ontario, Canada) which cover issues surrounding non-disclosure and release of information. These became the basis of what was to become my set of templates for all contracts.

If you are looking to put together some templates, locate a generic non-disclosure agreement for your jurisdiction. Add a section describing the work to be completed (your requirements section), fees to be paid (including maintenance and expense fees), and dates of all deliverables, and what they are. For each section, ensure you cover in detail what is included, and how changes to that section must be negotiated.

For example, you may be building a website for a client (note that I am not a lawyer, and the following is meant for illustration purposes only):

1. Requirements: To construct a 6 page website describing the client’s business. The information for each page will be provided in electronic form by the client. The text for each page will not exceed 750 words. There will be 5 e-mail accounts set up for the site. Hosting will be arranged by the contractor through SuperWebHosting.com and the client will absorb all fees associated with hosting the site. Images will be provided by the clientin jpg format, to a maximum of 4 images per page. Graphic design is not included, and all graphic design work will be done by the client.
2. Fees: The cost to set up the website specified in the requirements is $250.00 and is payable on delivery of the site. Once the text for each of the pages has been provided, one change to each page following publication will be included, provided the change is requested with 60 days of publication. 2 hours of telephone and e-mail consultation is included. Non-payment within 10 business days of publication of the site will result in a $25.00 late fee. Non-payment within 60 days of publication will result in a further $25.00 late fee.
3. Deliverables: The contractor will provide the client with all files required to publish the site, and all source material created for the purposes of creating the website. This will be completed within 30 days of the client delivering the final wording of all pages to the contractor. The client will provide this wording within 10 business days of the signing of this contract.

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The resulting code was not pretty, or efficient, but it worked. Since then (from the start of 2009) the client has been using it, and filing bug reports and change requests, which I have been chipping away at as quickly as I can.

Two weeks ago, with the number of bugs falling, I decided to clean up the program. Data access was spread all over the place, and needed to be consolidated, and field validation was minimal or non-existent. Mappings from the database to the screens was almost impossible to follow, as I used arrays and lists of values, and you had to follow the queries to figure out which array index corresponded to which field on the screen.

Once I started, I was committed to getting certain segments of the program cleaned up before I could publish the application again. Of course, that’s when another change request and bug came in, both relatively high priority. On the plus side, the bug was something that would be fixed during the clean-up process anyhow (an issue with saving certain characters, which would disappear once I rebuilt the data tier of the program). The change request, too, was a relatively simple change. The problem, however, is that the current state of the program was slightly unstable.

I have not yet heard back from the client as to whether they have noticed any differences in the application, and whether any new issues have cropped up. What I haven’t told them is that while I was refactoring the program, I located 4 bugs that they had not found, with certain fields from the database being mapped incorrectly to the screen, and that these issues were quickly fixed. Considering they’ve been using this program for over 2 months and haven’t noticed makes me wonder if they’ve even looked at that section of the program yet.

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Most applications consist of two parts: a resume or CV which outlines your professional experience, and a cover letter, which outlines you, as related to the position in question. For the resume, there are standard components: work experience, education, certifications, and so on. For the cover letter, the guidelines are less clear. Beyond the formatting, which, of course, should be in the same style as your resume, and the spelling and grammer, which should be correct, there are few rules about what goes into a cover letter.

1. Customize: A cover letter should be drafted for each and every application you make. Even if the titles of the position are the same, or you are applying for two different positions at the same company, the cover letter for each application should be unique. Of course, some of the content will overlap, but each should be written on its own.
2. Concise: A cover letter does not have to be a long treatise on your life story, and in fact, should not exceed a single page. Recruiters don’t want to sift through huge amounts of data to get at the real information, and they don’t have time to read through every essay that crosses their path. If your letter is relatively brief, it has a higher chance of being read to completion.
3. Informative: Use the cover letter as a way to show that you have researched the position you are applying for. Talk about some of your skills that would make you an ideal candidate. Highlight relevant experience you have that would be of benefit to the position.
4. Make a Sale: Talk about how the company would benefit by hiring you, not about how you will benefit from being hired. Convince them that they have a need for you, not the other way around.
5. Interest: What gave you the incentive to apply for the position? Did you come across a posting on a job board? Did a friend recommend the company? Did you read about them in the paper?

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At my office, process is part of the daily grind. I have been working there for over 2 years, and I have come across scenarios where process was more important than expertise. (Note that I do not discuss the alternative, since it is easy to understand why having quality people is important, and for more information on that topic, read my post Saving Money on an IT Solution.)

We have an on-call procedure for supporting applications even when no one is in the office. On occassion, a system will fail, causing the person who is on call to be notified. We have a clear process for what to do in the event of such a notification, which is detailed to the level of what to do for each and every system that we support. The reason for this is simple. Calls can come in the middle of the night, while the support person is sleeping. Rather than have them try to make decisions while they are half asleep, we detail the process, the choices that need to be made, and the information needed to make those decisions. Following this process has helped reduce the severity of the failures to minor bumps without impacting our customers as a result.

However, process can, and often does, go to the other extreme. A reader of the Daily Worse Than Failure will be able to think of several examples. In this situation, the issues behind the process can often be attributed to having non-technical people write the process. A lack of understanding of how a technology works (and more specifically, the technology requiring the process) often results in compensating for the lack by insisting on more documentation, more signatures, more approvals.

A good process is written by the people who will ultimately be following it. It needs acceptance from its users based on understanding of why the process is there. When the process is put into place, and management says “Follow the process” but there was no input from those who are meant to be using the process, resentment about the process, and often a flat refusal to use it will often ensue.

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For this project, one of the people involved decided to make use of a new technology which no one in the company had ever used before, along with a second technology for which we had limited experience available to us. The selling point for those technologies was that they were supposed to be easy to develop in.

Now, at the end of the project, the issues holding us up are directly related to those 2 technologies. Quite literally, they slow the program down. We’ve reached the point where some of us on the project are seriously considering rewriting those sections of the application. We figure that with 2 of us working on this using our downtime, we can get those sections of the program rewritten by the end of the month, in time for the program to go to production on its current schedule.

Perhaps this time technology will actually make things faster.

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Of course, if you have a business plan (which if you want your business to be successful, you will definitely need one), then you should have thought about this already. The question is, what did you come up with?

Some businesses can be developed in stages, which makes the answer to this question relatively simple: provide public information in stages, as each piece of your product or service becomes available. This way, you can ensure that the components you’re advertising can stand up to public scrutiny, and you don’t talk about the components you are still working on.

Other businesses, however, have an all-or-nothing perspective. They have a single product which cannot be broken into pieces. If these businesses require funding before the product is ready for sale, they will have to decide how much information to broadcast. Tell too little information about your product, and you won’t gain interest. Tell too much, and you may end up promising more than you can deliver, or give your competitors information that can be used by them. The trick is in striking the right balance between the two extremes.

My advice would be to use the following as general guidelines:

1. Be sure you are ready to talk about your product before going live.
2. Try to find a way to break up your deliverables into stages so that you can start generating a revenue stream and good publicity while you work on the later stages.
3. When talking about a work-in-progress, don’t talk about the features you haven’t solved yet, or are not 100% certain will be in the final product.
4. Make sure that when you start talking about your product, you have an image ready. You will make your first impression at this point in time, so be sure it is the one you want. You’re lucky, you get to control the timing of your first impression.
5. Don’t talk off-the-cuff. You will be asked questions about your product or service, and if you don’t have a prepared answer, be aware that creating one on the spot may result in revealing more information than you would otherwise want to tell.
6. Don’t target a bigger market than you are capable of managing. If your product can service millions of people in hundreds of industries, that doesn’t mean you need to target every industry from the start. Pick one or two as your initial market, and build on your success. You can work on expanding while impressing the smaller group you targeted.

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My guarantee is actually very simple. At the beginning of a job, I give a quote, whether it be a flat fee, or an hourly rate. I make it very clear what I will deliver for that cost. At the end of the job, the two of us (client and myself) determine that there will be no future development as part of this contract. At this point, my guarantee kicks in.

If the client locates an error in my work, no matter how large or small, within the first 3 months, the fix is 100% free. The only condition is that the error must be in a portion of the deliverable that the client asked for, and not in something which I decided to put in as an extra, unless it affects the rest of the program. For example, if the client asked for 3 reports, and I threw in a fourth, but it doesn’t work correctly, that’s not covered. But the other 3 reports are, and if the fourth report corrupted some data, that would also be covered.)

There’s an old expression: Put your money where your mouth is. My guarantee does exactly that. The client needs the program I provided, and is willing to pay for it. Because the work is all custom, the client wants to know 2 things:

1. How much will it ultimately cost?
2. How much will it cost me to get you to fix pieces that are broken?

The first question has the easy answer: $5000.00 or $75.00 per hour, for example. But the second question is the one which has the complicated answer. That’s where my guarantee comes into play. The answer is $0.00. There’s no catch. Once we decide it’s done, if you find a problem, I will fix it free of charge. If you want me to add something new, then we’ll need a new contract to cover that.

As a catch to this, I’ve added a second level of the guarantee. Occassionally I will subcontract work to other developers for a variety of reasons. My guarantee extends to their work as well. I insist when subcontracting that the subcontracter meet my guarantee. If they won’t do it, I won’t send them business. The reasoning on my part is simple. If you are not that confident in the quality of your work (after all, we’re only talking about bugs, not changes), then I don’t want to put my name anywhere near your work.

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I get an e-mail a few hours later that it’s not working. I checked the program, which I had tested earlier, and could not see any issues with it. So I paid a site visit, and determined that there was a configuration issue, which I resolved quickly.

The next day, I get another e-mail saying “It’s still not working”. I request that they regenerate their set of standards, as that may be causing the program to validate incorrectly. A few minutes later, I get a new set of standards, I update the program file, and send them the new version.

The next day, another e-mail comes in saying that the best match they can get through the program is 65% accuracy, which doesn’t make sense, as it should have been comparing the standards against itself (a perfect match). I then get a call saying that this is urgent, please investigate and fix ASAP.

I know that the client is waiting for this program, and that it will impact their sales if I deliver quickly. I take a look at what they sent me in the two versions of the standard, and realize something: The standard is missing some data – about 20% of the data!

I call the client directly and explain the issue. I manually generate the standard, validate it, and make a small change to the program to increase its error tolerance. I then send an e-mail to the 3 people I’ve been dealing with, and explain, in non-technical terms, what the problem had been (you sent me bad data for the standard).

I learned something from this experience. On the whole, the error in this case was not mine, but the fact that I did not have accurate information. Since this was a priority to the client, I worked quickly to resolve the issue, but that should not have been a determining issue. I paid a site visit as soon as I realized that I could not reproduce the issue on my end, so that I could see the client’s perspective. I found out at the end of the issue that I will be getting, in addition to the contract fees, an excellent reference and a well-written testimonial.

1. Even when the client is supposed to be providing some data, check that it is correct if you can.
2. Treat every issue raised by the client as though the contract depends on the speed and accuracy of your solution.
3. If you can’t reproduce the issue raised by the client, don’t assume it does not exist. Pay the client a visit if you can, so that they can show you. Even if you are correct that there is no issue, show the client some respect and give them the opportunity to show you the problem.
4. Every client can be the source of new leads. Treat the client with respect, maintain your credibility, and the client will recommend you to others if the opportunity presents itself.

Now I’m waiting for the client to validate the new version of the program, with the correct data, but my confidence is high that it will meet and possibly exceed expectation (always a good thing, promise low, deliver high). Then I will have a nice letter of recommendation, and a client who will laud my work ethic and competence, allowing my business to move forward into the growth stage.

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The problem on my end of this is simple. With several active clients, each of whom requires that I perform some task or another, how do I maintain a good relationship with all of them? Obviously, some tasks are more critical than others, but a client who has many low-priority tasks still requires a response, even if other clients keep raising high-priority items to be dealt with.

The system I use is fairly simple to implement, though the times I mention are meant as a general guideline, and can be changed according to need. Each client I work for, when they submit a task, is given an immediate response time. So if Client A submits a low priority task, I may inform him that the task will be completed within 3 weeks. This is based on the amount of work I currently have, plus some space for new high-priority tasks that might come in before the three weeks. However, if nothing else comes into play during that time, I may complete the task earlier. From the client’s perspective, since I have provided a time frame for the task, they are tolerant of a delay in getting their task completed, as long as I abide by the time line I provided.

On my end, I simply keep a list of all active tasks. I have some projects which are ongoing, and last for potentially months at a time. For those, I try not to provide an absolute date for the final product, but instead, give a range which is refined as we approach the end of the project. In order to be able to work on those projects, I designate about 50% of my available time to all my new projects (more if the schedule is light that week). The other 50% is divided among short-term tasks, fixing bugs, making small changes, and maintainance. As a new task is sent to me, I add it to my list of active tasks, either under the short-term work or under the long-term work. Within that group, it is prioritized and assigned a completion date (or range, in the case of long-term work). Any future tasks that are sent in are then prioritized without moving any tasks that are already planned.

I don’t use any special tools or software to keep track of my work. I find that a pen and paper work just fine, as long as you keep that information highly visible. What I actually use is Excel, listing each task, who reported it, the time to complete it, and the completion date I provided the client. I also mark the last date that I worked on that project, and what version of the project that particular item is meant to be included with. That allows me to group pieces of work together and bundle them into single releases.

If you have another system for prioritizing across multiple clients, I would love to hear about it. My process is a work in progress, so I am very interested in hearing other methods of managing your workload.

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Tech Support: Ok, Bob, type a capital B, then press enter.

Customer Named Bob: A capital B?

Tech Support: Right, capital B as in Bob.

Bob: Capital B as in Bob?

Tech Support: Exactly. Capital B as in Bob!

Bob: [Pause] That’s the one with two loops, right?

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I had a need to call technical support today for an issue with inserting a large number of data records into a remote database. I recieved a fairly generic error each time I tried to run my query, regardless of how I accessed the server. I checked their knowledge base, and found 3 methods for doing exactly what I was attempting, and tried all 3, all of which failed. So I braced myself and sent an e-mail to the server’s tech support asking if there was an internal issue.

This is not the first time I’ve had an issue with this particular provider, and their service has been pretty good to date. This time, too, despite the fact that it was early Sunday morning, I was called back within 30 minutes. They asked me to describe what I was trying to do (this was already sent to them in the e-mail they were responding to). They asked me to try the 3 options from their knowledge base, which I had already told them I had done. They asked me to send them a copy of the data I was inserting, also already attached to the original message.

After examing all this information for a second time, they came to the conclusion I had made before I started working… the problem was on their end, not mine. Note that I was sending them an e-mail because the error message I had received SAID it was an internal error on their end. Four hours later, they resolved the problem (at their end) and we’re back to work.

This incident is fairly typical of dealing with tech support. They assume that you have not read the manual (which in general is probably true, so I don’t hold that against them) and that you did not do any of the things you told them you did. This is why they make you repeat all the steps YOU ALREADY TRIED. And told them you already tried. Even if you call and tell them the error message, they insist that you replicate it for them right now. Never mind the processing time to generate the message is between 15 and 30 minutes. They want it now (although you did send them the exact time you last tried it, so they could check their logs from then).

When I deal with tech support, I generally want them to do the following:

1. Read my message. I probably explained exactly what I did. And the error I received.
2. Ask me if I looked in the knowledge base, and if you have a reference to a particular article, send it to me and ask me if I followed those instructions. You don’t have to walk me through them, I can read.
3. Don’t assume I’m an idiot when it comes to technical issues. I get asked to make tech support calls for family members, and I’m told by friends that this is normal. So even if I’m not the one with the original issue, I am still likely to be computer literate.

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