You’ve heard the popular phrase “Nine women can’t make a baby in a month.” I’ve often heard it uttered by the team being asked to deliver on unreasonable expectations when poor decisions by the powers that be led to those decisions being made, and those same powers that be are adding X number of resources to help. Essentially, what the team is saying back is that while the task at hand can be done, throwing more resources at the problem isn’t going to help speed the solution along any faster.

I have my own spin on the phrase and it is that “Nine men can’t make a baby in a month, or even 9 months, nor in any amount of time in the foreseeable future.”

What do I mean by this?

Well the issue of throwing more people at a solution and not getting to it any faster still exists, but now we have a new problem. Not only are we attempting to solve a problem by just throwing resources at it, we’re not even throwing the right resources at it for it to get accomplished at all. If you don’t begin with the right team, you’re not going to get the results you were hoping to get, no matter how positive your outlook, or how insistently you promised your superiors the job would get done.

With knowledge work especially, it’s the people and team you assemble that are going to make or break your solution. It’s not how much money can you, or can’t you, spend. It’s not how much time you do, or do not, have. It’s the people & their skillset that are going to help you to succeed. This is key to being successful.

How is this Relevant?

I cant count the number of projects I’ve been on, been privileged to knowing about, or heard about from various industry peers that have run into this exact scenario on an all too frequent occurrence. I’ve seen medium-to-large BPM software implementations with lofty goals (we won’t get into why the goals are so lofty in this post), with 40+ developers “working” to implement the solution.  In several of these cases, not only was throwing 40 developers on the problem the incorrect thing to do, they didn’t have the correct knowledge or experience to deliver quality results.   The results of having too many people? Well, maybe you spend too much money, have people doing very little at times, and have people walking on top of each other making things confusing. The results of have too many unskilled people and expecting the quality results? Disastrous.

There are only four outcomes of such a disaster:

  1. The entire program is scrapped, wasting millions of dollars of time, effort, and product licensing.
  2. Millions of dollars are spent to correct the situation by bringing in the team that should have been assembled the first time.
  3. The team suffers endlessly, realizing their mistake too late, but not having the right resources to fix it, and they go on supporting a horrible product
  4. Nobody bothers to realize the disaster, or pretends it doesn’t exist and goes on existing long enough to get promoted and start the cycle over again.

Don’t let this happen to you. Ensure you have the right team, with the right tools, in place to be successful – the first time. If you’re not sure if you have the right team in place to be successful, seek out professional guidance from someone you trust to help assemble the team and get it on the right track. Don’t just rely on the sales guy’s finely honed pitched as your litmus test.

A Major Problem…

Determining if you have the right team, first requires you or someone you trust to understand the skills and expertise it’s going to take to solve your issue, and how much work there is involved.  Many times, the company who’s paying for the team to come in doesn’t have the expertise internally, and they are trusting the team they hire to come in and help them. If you don’t have the expertise, just how are you going to verify who you’re bringing in (and all the people they plan to throw your way) have the right expertise?

You can’t hire a team to make a baby unless you understand that it takes a certain amount of time, and a couple of very specific people to do so. The same applies to your BPM implementation. You can’t ensure you’re hiring the right team if you don’t understand the right amount of time and skillsets it will take to be successful. I encourage some upfront investment in education on this point, or at a minimum some outside expertise to help you make the right decisions, even if that individual(s) are only there for this specific task & amount of time.

When you’re paying by the hour, you want to be sure you’re getting your money’s worth and I believe it’s imperative to interview each resource you’re putting on the project just as if you were hiring them yourselves. Ensure they can hold their own when discussing the product or service involved, and have the experience and can speak at length about that detail.

Expertise costs money. Junior resources can be cheap, and the cost savings can be tempting. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to take nine men and make a baby!