Quality and the Rugby World Cup

France is holding the Rugby World Cup at the moment. Interest is waning after a poor start, but that is not the point of this article. Each time the rugby world cup comes around, I am reminded of the 1991 edition, a period which shaped me for many reasons.

At the time, I had been in my first job after graduation for a year or so. I was working in the research labs for a multi-national company, mainly involved in developing techniques for analysing satellite images. I have mixed feelings about the 2.5 years I spent there. On the negative side, I felt that most of the people were waiting for retirement and it was not the most dynamic working environment. On the positive side, it helped me develop my rebellious side, as I rallied against apathy and cynicism (traits that have now seeped into my own personality, but which I try hard to suppress. But, as usual, I digress).

The 1991 World Cup coincided with a no-doubt fascinating event at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham (i.e., it was big). The project I had been working on was deemed interesting enough to warrant a poster in the exhibition hall (it was something to do with detecting ships from the patterns left in images by their wakes - I could tell you more, but the secret services may pay me a visit).

I spent a long time working on that poster. I was quite proud of it. The project was interesting and to top it all, it had nice pictures in it - who could ask for more? I was in the days before Photoshop, so I had to glue all the pieces of text and image directly onto an A3 piece of paper before sending it to the "Turn-pieces of-paper-into-posters" department. Well, the day before the conference started, I was told that the poster wouldn't be ready until the second, and last, day of the exhibition. Did I say it wasn't a dynamic environment?

However, the hotel was booked, train tickets bought and space in the conference hall reserved. What to do? My reaction today would be different to my reaction at the time. My reaction then was to say, "For Christ's sake, if you haven't got the time, I'll just take the mock-up and use that instead of the poster. What I've done here is interesting and other people will be interested in finding out more". This proved to be a monumental and professional-life-shaping mistake.

It was an industry event and several top "dignitaries" were there. Unfortunately, the dignitary from our company saw the "poster" of the project of which I was so proud and complained loudly to my boss that it was amateurish and reflected badly on the company. Not surprisingly, I was told to take it down. This felt like I had received a very heavy tackle from one of the All Blacks. The boss was right: I should have waited - showing something professional for one day was better than showing something amateurish for 2 days even if I thought it needed to be "out there".

Why do I mention this during the rugby world cup? Well, I spent the evening after the first day watching a match in the window of a TV shop in Solihull, near Birmingham - no sound, just pictures. It couldn't get much worse. I was alone, too shy to go to a pub or restaurant alone and felt utterly miserable. Boo-hoo, poor me.

I work in the software industry and am nowadays mostly involved in project management. There are lots of blogs out there about the importance of getting version 1.0 of a piece of software out of the door and into the customer's hands. In many cases, this is undoubtedly the best course of action, particularly if you need to be the first into the market and I have worked on this sort of project before and, indeed, it can be a good way to get early feedback if you find the right partners.

However, in an established discipline, such as the one I worked in at that time and the one I work in now where the software is used in mission-critical installations, quality counts - involve the customer from the beginning and right through the project, but take whatever time it needs to get it right (within the business constraints) and be prepared to defend this position - don't throw it out there because you are proud of it and want it to be seen as soon as possible - it will fly back in your face like an, ahem, disgruntled All-Black forward (to keep the laboured analogy going).
I don't pretend to be any kind of guru, but it's become my mantra and a lesson I learnt the hard way.

The good news is that the French rugby team's over-confidence has been dented, and that the English rugby team's under-confidence might pull us through as far as a sound beating by a team from the southern-hemisphere which is not so bad - quality counts, but let's be realistic!