Project Pitfalls: The Elusive Project Y

I love projects.

I hate projects.

It is kind of this love-hate relationship.
New projects are exciting. Everyone wants to improve. Everyone wants to solve problems. That is why I love projects.

However, projects can also be very tricky. In our modern world of ever-increasing instant gratification, people want results, uh, yesterday. So it is really easy to start identifying potential causes of the problem. (Everyone wants to be the hero, right?) Of course, then, it is easy to start manipulating variables. Yet, what happens when it is difficult to monitor the results of those manipulations?

The issue is that sometimes it is necessary to unplug a little bit from the frenzy of the latest crisis (project) and take a few moments to reflect on the situation. Recently, we have started to address a serious quality issue within our organization. However, this is not the first time this issue has been examined. In fact, I’ll admit working on it for nearly a year back in 2004. Yes, we identified some of the variables causing the quality issue. Unfortunately, years later, it is quite apparent that more variables exist.

What is the problem? Well, the project Y (defect) is a bit elusive. The defect typically does not manifest itself until the product has left the building. It appears maybe two or three weeks after shipment. Okay, so this makes it difficult to monitor the defect. The time lag also makes it difficult to correlate the presence of the defect with actual production data.

So last week, I had to face reality, pause, and reflect on the problem at hand. This is what I hate about projects. I am so eager for results that it is hard to just relax for a few minutes and rationally evaluate the situation.

The answer became quite clear. We needed to develop a method for causing the defect to occur in-house. Because the appearance of the defect is a function of time, we are attempting to develop a 24-hour heat-aging test that will cause the defect to occur without degrading the sample due to the presence of the heat. We also are in the process of acquiring an instrument that will provide quantitative results. These results will hopefully be more robust than previous qualitative observations. Initial work late last week looked promising as we started to observe qualitative and quantitative differences between treated samples. Once we finish developing our method, then we can finally deep-dive into the process and solve this problem once and for all.