(Posted on July 18, 2009)

We've heard a lot of nonsense lately, on a fairly regular basis since January 2007, as we noted on our Middle Managers PM Challenge page, that some executives believe meeting a baseline schedule is the most important thing in completing a project.

Sound odd to you?  It did to us until quite a few middle managers stated their executives today tell them to:

Forget costs

Forget contract labor hour restrictions

Forget quality

Forget even if the project's product works

Just meet the schedule!

If we've heard these claims once in the last year or so, we've heard it 25 times--with all sorts of projects!

Enough! Since this "forget quality" logic escapes us, we issue the following challenge to those executives fixated only on project schedules:

Bluejeans Place will publish a no less than 2500 word guest editorial by any executive of any private sector firm, government agency or military unit who wishes to argue his or her contention that:

"Sticking to a project's baseline schedule is more important than taking the time to prevent, detect and resolve quality issues in any project's product."

In response, Bluejeans Place will issue a counter editorial titled:

"Getting garbage on time still gets you garbage!"

Editorial Comment by Bluejeans

For obvious reasons, I doubt any executive will accept our challenge, but then again, I may be surprised.  (A Bluejeans Place editorial several years ago rebutting, point by point, an Internet chain letter full of bigotry towards all Muslims resulted in at least six e-mail responses claiming such bigotry is perfectly correct and acceptable in today's America!)

February 4, 2012 Update

As of today, no executive has taken on our challenge.  We'll keep this challenge posted, but presumably our observation remains true:  "Getting garbage on time still gets you garbage!"