Ask All of the Questions
You will find as a project manager, there are loopholes in any system. If you don't believe it, ask any parent whether or not this is true. A parent can tell a six-year-old to only interrupt an adult conversation if it is extremely important, but then the child interrupts to state that she watched Barney today on television. The parent gets mad at the child, but in fairness, telling that to the parent was important to the child. The parent then has to define what an extremely important conversation is to the child. Before long, the child will find another loophole and the cycle will continue.
The same is true for your project team. In the example of the house painting, there was a very key question asked. That was, “Will that add to my cost?” when the contractor stated that they could bring another worker to the project. If you don't ask all of the questions, you are generally in for a big surprise.
Projects will have a tendency to go out of control exponentially based on the number of assumptions that are made. Be sure that you are handling the obvious ones, such as time, cost, and quality.
For the sake of this story, let's say the project manager did not ask about the cost of bringing another resource on. Two weeks later, after all of the work is complete, the project manager receives the bill for the house painting, and it is twice the cost. When the irate project manager calls the contractor, they will say that they were asked to get another resource and the one that they had available was more expensive than the one already on the project. Therefore, the project manager created one issue by solving another. Let's explore the proper conversation for this matter:
PROJECT MANAGER: Will adding the additional resource affect my cost?
CONTRACTOR: Yes, the resource that we have available is $50 per hour instead of the $25 per hour quoted.
PROJECT MANAGER: So, my choices are to finish the painting of the house five days late or have it cost more?
CONTRACTOR: Yes.
PROJECT MANAGER: Let me talk to my sponsor and I will get back to you.
Please proceed as originally planned, and I will let you know.
By asking all of the questions, you have uncovered another potential issue. Again, this is a learned skill, but if you always keep time, cost, and quality in mind as you are searching for options, you should be able to avoid huge errors.
