Here are some thoughts and tips that can help to maintain your untarnished reputation for on time and on budget successes:
#5 – Going into a project, either as a project manager or one of the development team members, you are fully aware when the planned project deliverables involve technical uncertainty. I am not talking about whether you and/or your team have the required skills and subject matter expertise/experience required to hit the deck running, but rather, whether the proposed tools, design or techniques themselves are early beta or have never been attempted in a production environment before. You are boldly going where no one has gone before. With both the open access to information and rapid advances in technology, it is not uncommon to have a client or project manager hedge their bets on a new programming paradigm or methodology that they have read about and decided they want to use, believing it to be the best long term investment and direction to take.
This is one risk factor you can easily recognize and have every right to raise the red flag with legitimate reason. It should not be difficult for you to bring this to the attention of your project manager and/or stake holders so that an adequate “buffer” is included in the project estimates to account for this uncertainty. Murphy’s law can and will kick in. When you are blazing new trails on the bleeding edge of technology, it is highly likely you will experience a much higher then normal number of trial and error iterations. With new technology, you will also require vendor support that will lead to time delays when you run into situations where it does not work as expected for example.
The key is, recognize this going in, ensure there is time built into the project estimates to account for technical uncertainty and be sure to communicate both successes and set backs or complete road blocks along the way as you get into the development phase. It is critical to keep your client or project manager fully informed especially when working with these types of unknowns that are beyond your direct control. That way, the best decisions and adjustments can be made as early as possible to ensure overall project success.
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