One of those lazy days when nothing interesting was happening and Prabha was looking forlorn and lost. When quizzed, she opened up about how her marketing department was committing to unreasonable deadlines and the technical team has to struggle with delivery. Kingo, who worked in the marketing department, could not handle any criticism of his area of work. He exploded “That is the universal law. Our job is to get contracts and meet targets. If technical people cannot deliver, it is their problem. If we don’t get contracts, you won’t have projects to work.”
Prabha, with a studious look said, “Do you know that almost half the IT projects never get implemented for some reason or the other”. Kaushik was quick on the response, “More than half the contracts bid in Bridge are also not made”, Padma who was silent all along said, “The reason for this is that we, in general, like to over commit and under deliver – be it in marketing or Bridge. If we can do a proper effort and resource estimate and bid accordingly, we should be able to reduce such disasters”.
Kaushik went on to narrate an experiment done on Bridge to amplify this point. One very good pair in a club event was told that they will PASS all the time and never bid. However, they will defend well and try to make as many over tricks as possible. They repeated this experiment for a few days and they averaged 60 per cent by just not bidding. It shows how marketing people love large contracts and bridge players love to bid games and slams”
Padma had an important point to add, “WBF changed the penalty rules for doubled contracts from (2n-1)*100 when you are not vulnerable to (2n-1)*100 for first 3 tricks and then 300 per trick. This prevented overbidding when you are not vulnerable”. Kingo, the commercial man said, “Penalties will work in Bridge but in the world of marketing penalties on contracts are very rarely enforceable as it is very difficult to prove which side missed out on a deliverable. I have yet to see a project where the customer does not negotiate and agrees on our effort estimate.”
Everyone pulled up their hand bags and haversacks and said, “We have to just accept that we are not going to change the world and have to learn deliver on over commitment.”
Tailpiece: Goofy barked to have the final say. Under committing and over delivering leads to customer mistrust as they feel they were taken for a ride while over committing and under delivering leads to employee dissatisfaction. We must learn to just commit and deliver in the right balance. Prabha patted Goofy and said “Easier said than done.”
