If you're like me, you feel like you can tackle any project, get it done on time or before and with stellar success. Unfortunately, this attitude has brought me nothing but pain & suffering when doing work for clients. In the past, I always used to underestimate the difficulty of my projects and would convey that to my clients in the form of unrealistically small estimates on time and budget.
Luckily, I was usually on a team of highly motivated, competent people — so we were actually able to hit many of our deadlines but the products we were delivering weren't the highest quality and I started to get burned out. However, when I endured a hellish project that ultimately ended up in failure I finally saw the light. I started to realize that these tight deadlines were not only consistently making my clients upset but were ruining my life — it was then that I realized that I needed to:
LOWER THE BAR! [Read more…] about Don't Raise the Bar — Lower It!