Comments on: How To Avoid Monumental Screw Ups When Working On Projects

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[...] How To Avoid Monumental Screw Ups When Working On Projects [...]

By: Barry Lynch

Barry Lynch — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:05:53 +0000

Great post and comments.

I’ve been both supplier as a consultant and now client as a business owner. The fact is mistakes will happen and are, unfortunately, the only and best way to learn.

Agree with all of the comments about planning, and having the right systems in place. It’s easy to say at the beginning of a project that there are no risks to failure but there always are. List out your risks and dependencies at the outset, sit down with your client and explain these and how you’re going to mitigate against them.

Of course there will be things that can happen completely unexpectedly and at the point you do need to kick into Jon’s plan. Take a step back, calculate the impact, fess up to your manager, take some time to put a clear plan in place to sort the problem. At that point raise the issue and your plan to resolve with the client.

Any reasonable client will appreciate your honesty and your commitment to fix the problem, rather than finding cracks appearing 2 months after go live!

By: japanese words

japanese words — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:42:53 +0000

Great list. I think one of the best ways to avoid making huge mistakes is to not worry about making small ones. One of the best ways to learn is from the mistakes that you make.

By: GoEverywhere Team

GoEverywhere Team — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:22:00 +0000

I used to have a real problem with screw ups. I wanted to do everything perfect! Finally, I have realized that’s not possible. Number 3: Develop Good Work Habits, is so important and can really help you from making a lot of mistakes. I have all of my files, documents, passwords and usernames stored and organized on my webtop with GoEverywhere. Check it out you might find it helpful too!

By: KateG

KateG — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:14:27 +0000

This is why everyone should back up. I know it is a lot easier said then done, but with some basic software most of us (probably not data base professionals or developers – sorry) can back up with only a modest amount of space. I don’t have words to tell you how many times a half a TB has saved me strife.

By: Simon Stapleton

Simon Stapleton — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:31:16 +0000

Wowee this is good advice. Nobody likes suppliers that try to ignore their mistakes, even worse, cover them up. This totally destroys trust doesn’t it!

We shouldn’t ignore the personality of the individual freelancer. Some people are pre-disposed to believe mistakes are not their fault. I don’t mean say that to patronize – but it’s a fact. Admitting failure is really, really tough for some people. I have two friends that believe that the world is against them (both freelancers) and it’s a challenge to coach them to admit that the responsibility for failure is their own.

If this is a character trait you possess (well, psychotherapists would call this a character disorder) then you need to work really hard at minimizing it’s effect (psychotherapy is one possibility, but seeing a quack can seem quite drastic), or seriously consider whether freelancing is a sustainable venture.

As you say Laura, at some point, we all screw up!

By: Thiago Cavalcanti

Thiago Cavalcanti — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:10:14 +0000

Hi! You could add to that list “5. Leave Room For Contingency Time!”.

Since you never know when something is going to go wrong the best practice is to quote a bigger time than what you actually think you need for your clients. The worst thing that could happen them is you delivering the work ahead of time!

;)

By: JohnONolan

JohnONolan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:18:05 +0000

Great advice, sometimes it’s just impossible to avoid messing up – I’ve always found that it’s how you deal with it after it’s happened that makes the biggest difference in the severity of the outcome!

By: Meryl K. Evans

Meryl K. Evans — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:10:05 +0000

James is right — being organized, using checklists and having a process helps stave off screw ups. This doesn’t mean that if a person isn’t an organized freak like I am, you have no chance as a freelancer. It’ll be harder because it’s not something that comes naturally.

If you do screw up — and hey, we’re humans! — owe up to it and fix it. One time I submitted a press release for a client and it ended up getting the next higher rate instead of the standard rate. What happened is that the service changed their process on me (the service is sneaky about how it adds on — its interface also doesn’t help). So I contacted the service and fixed the problem and received the standard rate.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:26:54 +0000

I have had 1 major screw ups and this was near the start of freelancing.

Database was too big to export via phpMyAdmin. No SSH access.. I thought I would wing it.

I needed to change the format of currency, my client told me there was 1 currency type in the database. I ran my ‘change all’ query. About 15 minutes later the client called back and said he had misunderstood the question. There were 6 currencies in the database… he thought I asked how many currency types needed to be changed…

Instead of converting dollars into pounds. I had changed all currency types to pounds and multiplied the currency value by the exchange rate. Basically corrupted the whole database…

I’m never doing that again