Issue #2598
- WEALTHY: Nip unexpected costs in the bud (David Cross)
- HEALTHY: Is your flora making you fat? (Kelley Herring)
- WISE: James Joyce on mistakes
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- 5 steps to keeping mistakes from getting to you (Brian Tracy)
- Avoid this ambiguous and troublesome word (Don Hauptman)
- It’s Fun to Know… why you should watch out for men named Ivan
- Add “hagiography” to your vocabulary
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How to Prevent “Scope Creep”
By David Cross
You receive an invoice from your website or software developer. You query a charge you didn’t know about. The developer tells you it relates to a new feature they developed… one that you asked for.
“I did?!”
I’ve seen this happen many times. The problem stems from discussions along the way – when you casually say, “It would be nice to have… ” or wonder aloud, “Would it be possible to… ?”
In one case, when the developer presented his design for a shopping cart on the company website, the CEO looked at it, nodded, and remarked, “Wouldn’t it be good if we could somehow add money-off coupons so we could tie in our printed advertising with the website?” Everyone at the meeting agreed that, vague as the idea was, it would, indeed, “be good.”
They forgot about it, but the developer didn’t. And they were surprised when he came back with a new design – and a bill for the $7,500 it took to implement the coupon feature.
When you are in brainstorming or “blue-sky-creative-anything-goes” mode, many developers will interpret the “Can we do this?” ideas that are thrown out as “I require you to do this.” I’ve seen it increase project costs by tens of thousands of dollars.
To prevent what project managers refer to as “scope creep” (because it stretches out the scope of the project), tell the developer at the outset that any changes to the original contract must be documented in writing and okayed by everyone involved. That includes associated costs, as well as any effect the additional work will have on the project’s timeframe.
Putting every requested change in black and white, clearly stating cost and time implications, helps everyone stick to their budgets and deadlines… and prevents future shock.
[Ed. Note: Did you ever cost your company - or yourself - money because you didn't get the details of a job in writing? Let us know right here.]
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”
James Joyce
Using Stumbling Blocks as Stepping Stones
By Brian Tracy
Everyone makes mistakes – and the busier you are, the more mistakes you will make. The only question is “How well and how effectively do you deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life?”
You’ve got to learn how to benefit from your mistakes and how to remain positive in the face of adversity. To get started, here are five ideas to consider:
• Let the Light Shine In
This is achieved through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. To truly understand yourself and to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to open up to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won’t make you feel guilty or ashamed of what has happened.
• Expect a Lot Out of Life
There are two ways to look at the world: the benevolent way and the malevolent way. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression. They don’t expect a lot and they don’t get much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn’t anything they can do to make it better.
On the other hand, people with a benevolent or positive worldview see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything happens as part of a great process designed to make them successful and happy. They approach their lives, their work, and their relationships with optimism, cheerfulness, and a general attitude of positive expectations. They expect a lot, and they are seldom disappointed.
• Flex Your Mental Muscles
When you develop the skill of learning from your mistakes, you become the kind of person who welcomes obstacles and setbacks as opportunities to flex your mental muscles and move ahead. You look at problems as rungs on the ladder of success that you grab onto as you pull your way higher.
One of the most common ways of dealing with a mistake is to fail to accept it when it occurs. This is invariably fatal to high achievement.
• Cut Your Losses
Statistically speaking, 70 percent of all the decisions we make will be wrong. That’s an average. This means that some people will fail more than 70 percent of the time, and some will fail less.
It is hard to believe that most of the decisions we make could turn out to be wrong in some way. If that is the case, how can our society continue to function at all? But the fact is that our society, our families, our companies, and our relationships continue to survive and thrive because intelligent people tend to cut their losses and minimize their mistakes.
It is only when people refuse to accept that they have made a bad choice or decision – and prolong the consequences by sticking to it – that a mistake becomes extremely expensive and hurtful.
• Learn From Your Mistakes
Learning from your mistakes – using them to better yourself and improve the quality of your thinking – is an essential skill that enables you to develop the resilience to be a master of change rather than a victim of change. The person who recognizes that he has made a mistake and changes direction the fastest is the one who will win in an age of increasing information, technology, and competition.
By remaining fast on your feet, you will be able to out-play and out-position your competition. You will become a creator of circumstances rather than a creature of circumstances.
Here are three steps you can take immediately to put the above ideas into action.
1. Imagine that your biggest problem or challenge in life has been sent to you at this moment to help you, to teach you something valuable. What could it be?
2. Be willing to cut your losses and walk away if you have made a mistake or a bad choice. Accept that you are not perfect, that you can’t be right all the time… and then get on with your life.
3. Learn from every mistake you make. Write down every lesson it contains. Use your mistakes in the present as stepping stones to great success in the future.
[Ed. Note: Brian Tracy is the world's most listened to audio author on personal and business success and one of America's leading authorities on the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. With Brian's Flight Plan, you can discover how to achieve more, faster than you ever dreamed possible. You also receive 2 BONUS CDS. Learn more here.
Life's little irritations can stand in your way to success. But there are clever ways to deal with most of them. Find out how here.]
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Why You Need to Balance Your Bacteria
Do you struggle to lose weight – even though you’re eating a clean diet and getting vigorous exercise? If so, there’s something else you need to do: Balance your bacteria.
The gastrointestinal system is home to trillions of microbes that carry out dozens of essential functions. They train the immune system, synthesize vitamins (including B vitamins and vitamin K), and regulate hormones. And new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows they affect weight too.
While the “good bugs” in the intestinal tract (Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus) promote digestion and elimination, harmful gut bacteria (including Bacteriodes and Clostridium) slow the motion that propels food forward, causing stagnation and weight gain.
The good news is that “friendly bacteria” can crowd out those fat-storing flora. All you have to do is feed them the right food.
Boost your friendly flora with a high-fiber (especially soluble fiber) diet that’s low in sugar. Aim for at least 60 percent of your food to be fresh (not processed), and always opt for organic and naturally raised.
[Ed. Note: You can get plenty of great techniques for losing weight and staying fit - for free. Just sign up for ETR's natural health newsletter, and you'll get a twice-weekly dose of healthful recipes, fat-burning strategies, and more.
Now you can enjoy your favorite treats - without an ounce of guilt. Pick up nutrition expert Kelley Herring's e-book, Guilt-Free Desserts, and find 40 easy-to-make, mouthwateringly delicious, 100 percent healthy recipes you can make at home.]
The Language Perfectionist: Should You Give Moot the Boot?
By Don Hauptman
Consider these passages, drawn from an Internet search:
• “I think if it handles the same as other cars in its segment, then being heavier is a moot point.”
• “This makes tamoxifen look good, but it’s a moot issue to the women in question. If the side effects of tamoxifen are this bad, why is it being used at all… ?”
• “Scherer assumes that conservatives buy the premise that the government’s purpose in taking wealth is to redistribute it. We do not, so his entire argument is moot.”
In all three of these examples, moot is used to mean settled, irrelevant, or academic. But does it?
Well, yes and no. This is one of those tricky words. So pay attention…
The original meaning of moot was precisely the opposite: unsettled, debatable, subject to argument. But probably as a result of its use in the term moot court, it came to have the sense of hypothetical or meaningless.
Thus, moot can be categorized as a contronym or Janus word, ] a member of that elite group of words that have two contradictory meanings. (This fascinating roster also includes sanction and cleave.)
Both senses of moot remain in use, so a reader or listener who is familiar with the original meaning might reasonably ask, “What are you trying to say?” To preclude such ambiguity and confusion, I recommend that you avoid using the word.
So what do you use instead? You have many choices. For instance, the writer of the first example above could have said that the car’s weight doesn’t matter or is unimportant.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
It’s Fun to Know: Why You Should Watch Out for Men Named Ivan
From the annals of useless and improbable research…
Shippensburg University researchers have determined that men with popular first names (like Michael and David) are less likely to get in trouble with the law than those with less common names. They came to this conclusion after putting together a “popularity-name index” (PNI) and comparing it to a list of juvenile delinquents.
They don’t expect us to believe that it’s the name itself that causes a person to commit a crime (except, perhaps, in the case of “A Boy Named Sue”). But they suggest that young people with unpopular names may be treated differently by their peers and, thus, have difficulty forming friendships.
Okay. But what should we do with this information?
The researchers would like to think it could help identify potential troublemakers early on, so they could be channeled into intervention programs. (”Oh, no! That little boy’s name is Markus! We’d better get him some help before he turns into a serial killer!”) We think “studies” like this are a waste of time and money.
(Source: LiveScience)
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Word to the Wise: Hagiography
A “hagiography” (hag-ee-OG-ruh-fee) is a study of the lives of the saints. The word is also used for a biography that idealizes a particular person.
Example (as used in a review of Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master by Michael Sragow in The Atlantic): “[Victor] Fleming – best known today as the (replacement) director of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind – here receives his long-overdue hagiography.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009
Similar Articles:
- Using Stumbling Blocks as Stepping Stones – Everyone makes mistakes – and the busier you are, the more mistakes you will make. The only question…
- How to Prevent “Scope Creep” – You receive an invoice from your website or software developer. You query a charge you didn’t know a…
- Advice From a 97-Year-Old Champion – “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.” So said John Wooden, the Hall of Fa…
- 6 Steps for When You Really Blow It – Everyone’s done it. Missed that big meeting. Didn’t finish that proposal on time. Forgot that interv…
- The Secret to Fat Loss – You want the secret to fat loss? Okay, but you’re not going to like it. It has nothing to do with gr…
- Watch Your Mouth – Don’t minimize your mistakes. Whatever you did wrong… no matter how insignificant it seems to you….
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I recently answered an add for “a good writer needed.” Little did I know that this entity was scoping out material for their website they could steal. I submitted my ideas for a landing page, including a fantastic USP, WITHOUT adding a disclaimer that all the intellectual material belonged to me and could not be published or reproduced without my expressed and written permission. After a few days of no response, I realized my mistake. Never again will I submit work without a disclaimer or first negotiating and collecting at least partial payment for work rendered.
Thanks for a great newsletter!
Goretta M. Duncan
Pardon the second post. I found typos I felt compelled to fix. BTW, I love your newsletter and read it faithfully everyday.
This article was good as far as it went but there is more to controlling the scope of a project than just ensuring you manage changes to an original contract. As a software developer and systems/business analyst I can tell you, in my opinion, scope creep happens more often and to a more detrimental degree due to the client than a developer. The more inexperienced a developer is in the project management process the more they are at the mercy of client’s whims and often think they need to implement every desire mentioned. Most will have one client where they bust their buttons to implement every whim and will learn their lesson the hard way when they don’t get paid for all the extra work. The sad part is the client usually gets the features anyway because the developer didn’t plan for a way to exclude or turn them off from use for non-payment.
Personally, I believe new development project cost in the beginning can be nothing more than a good estimate and often just a ballpark with a lot of padding. Good is dependent on the experience of your developers and maybe more importantly, how well a client knows their business plus their ability and “willingness” to communicate their needs. You would be amazed at how many think their business runs one way and it really runs another. I am very good at ferreting out requirements but I’ve even had clients where I thought I had asked all the questions only to learn they deliberately withheld information because they didn’t think it important or as in one case, he wanted to see how what we did came out first. Another told me, “Oh I was going to wait till we were all done with this and then tell you about that for phase two.” I actually went to the trouble of doing a cost comparison between giving that information upfront and what it was going to cost now having withheld that information. The gentleman was fired from his job for this error in judgment and as it turns out he was using that tact on many projects costing the company untold amounts of money. If a company wants to save money and a lot of grief, please do not withhold any information about your business operations even if you think it unrelated to the current project because 9 times out of ten YOU’RE WRONG! I always tell my clients we will develop to your budget but we like to plan development for your future needs too. As a developer I can approach a project two ways both of which will meet current needs and requirements but in the end leave very different future issues for the client. I can develop so processes are set in stone or I can develop to allow for ease of changes and expansion. The effort to plan for change is significantly less than to redo a system often from scratch to make changes later. It’s not hard to determine which way in the long run saves client’s money when they eventually want those “vague dreams and wish lists”. Even if the expense is slightly increased it needs to be weighed against the future costs and savings if it’s not done. I would never deliberately develop a closed project set in stone but some developers do not think as much outside the box from a business perspective as I do. I owned a successful franchise for 11 years before I became a developer so maybe that gives me a different perspective to begin with. I wish more developers would take the approach I do when it comes to this subject and also when it comes to all the fancy bells and whistles they like to put in sometimes that are basically just impractical noise. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
I might be a little less stringent on very small projects but as a rule I am adamant about written requirements and sign off which include both functional (how it works on the user end) and technical/design (how a developer makes the functional happen) specifications. The business side will often not understand the technical but it is there for them should they ever hire a developer, change developers or need technical assistance from anyone other than the person who did the development. I get arguments these things take too much time or are unnecessary but I feel they are critical to the success of the project and safeguard both parties from scope creep. Milestones of development should be set with user/client testing for problems and sign off of acceptance when it passes testing. Incremental development and testing is crucial to finding errors and integration issues at a point in time when they are as easily fixed as possible instead of waiting till development is complete and finding out you have a clustered mess of problems you are trying to pinpoint the source of. The rework in such cases can be extensive and costly, often much more so than scope creep ever thought of being! These are and should be standard practice and would go a long way in eliminating any “surprise development bills” at the end of the project. I have yet to see a project that cannot be staged for testing and approval signoff at each completed milestone. The nature of website, website applications or software development is one of a moving target subject to change throughout the development cycle until completion and beyond. Something can look great on paper, in a flow chart or in UML use cases but inevitably items are overlooked, or changes to business rules occur that affect the project and are not discovered until actual development begins.
Following project management best practice steps are critical to the success of any project and protecting all parties concerned. I have had more clients than I care to count do the vague “wouldn’t it be nice” dreaming and then refuse to pay because they didn’t get their “wish list”. This has happened when I specifically asked if they would like an estimate to evaluate the additional cost for the purpose of making an informed decision and they have said no, we don’t want to spend any more money right now. In the end, I pull out all the sign offs as well as a detailed project plan and we end the issue then and there. A client could do the same were the situation reversed.
In my humble opinion, if you end up at the end of a project with a surprise bill YOU are just as much at fault as the developer because steps in the project management process vital to controlling scope creep were missing. For instance, in the example given, the extra development had to take extra time so who was questioning and following up on that? I’m sure given all the details of this story I could tear it apart and find enough error on both sides to go around but ultimately you hire a developer, they work for you to do what you want and it is up to you to make clear what that is. A developer with half a brain should make sure they have signoff on everything they do or they can just expect not to get paid if they go beyond what they have authorization for in writing. Both parties must do their part and frankly I run into many clients who are too lazy or can’t be bothered and want the developer to do it all including writing their content copy for their business even if they have to make it up to fill the space. You might laugh but it happens all the time. All sides need to take full responsibility for their part in the project especially where communication of requirements is concerned. If one party fails, it is going to cost one or both in the end. So, if you drop the ball, don’t just blame the other guy get ready to own your part in your pain. Welcome to life!
Some interesting thoughts.