j e s r u s h . c o m

Cornelius Fitchner has put together another great episode over at the project management podcast, this one is an interview with quality expert Stacy Goff.  Goff has some great insights into how and why project quality suffers and what PMs can do about it.

My favorite nugget came when Fitchner asked Goff whether good processes are the key to good quality.  Goff asked Fitchner to imagine a project where the goal was to bake a great cake.  A fantastic cake recipie was located for the endeavor… it was clear, descriptive, straightforward and produced consistently excellent results.  In other words, the process was a very good one.  However when the cake was actually made, the cook had to use a cheap chocolate because it was the only thing locally available.  They had to use a hand mixer (poor aeration) since there was no counter-top unit in the kitchen.  They followed the process word for word, but the end result was of mediocore quality.

I love this example because it illustrates the need for holistic quality management: Even the best process fails when the inputs are off.

There is a brillant podcast over at Cornelius Fitchner’s aptly titled ‘Project Management Podcast’ about the challenges of working with virtual project teams (i.e. when team members are scattered all over the world). In addition to all the usual difficulties in managing a project team, virtual teams add an additional layer of communication complication and other relational problems. But this week’s guest–Adrienne Keane of Cisco–has some incredibly good advice for handling these issues. She has organized them into six success factors:

• Foster effective communications
• Focus on building relationships and trust
• Establish team identity & key processes
• Conduct effective virtual meetings
• Recognize & reward team members
• Enable collaboration & communication with technology

This is not pop-management nonsense, Keane has some really good ideas on implementing those factors.  Listen to the full podcast for all the details.