1st March 2005, 01:42 PM
I write this knowing I will probably be in a minority of one (any excuse not to finish a rewrite of a desk top prepared by another organisation).
On these occasions I often wonder if I am working in a different system to everybody else. Curators, for example, have a right of access to development sites providing they are conforming to H&S.
How serious is the problem of ?standards?? I get the impression from reading these threads and other things over the years that the answer is very common. Is this really so? In any system things are going to go wrong and no organisation or individual can produce perfect work on every occasion. Life is just not like that.
I think that what is urgently and continually required is an assessment of how the current system is working. There are a number of easy and quantifiable ways this can be done.
I would argue if on 90% of occasions things are ?acceptable? then there is basically nothing wrong with the system or the people operating it.
If on the other hand things are not acceptable on 90% of cases then clearly the standards are too high.
I think we suffer from the use of anecdotal accounts rather than quantitative analysis.
I also think we have still not bottomed out what quality actually is for example a good quality report will be printed on 90g not 80g paper (does this really matter?).
We also have to consider if things have gone wrong why they have gone wrong and if the situation was avoidable. For example if a project has gone wrong because there was insufficient money it has to be considered if:
1. The information provided was correct
2. was a mistake made
3. was too much risk being taken for the money
4. did circumstances change
5. was the situation contractually unfair
6. The paymaster changed the payment terms and actually paid up
7. or did the people tendering deliberately go into a contract expecting to loose money.
In reality I would suggest that these are all commercial decisions and are not matters for any external body provided that the organisation concerned are grown up enough to accept they are going to make a loss. In particular they must realise that they cannot reduce the loss by ?cutting corners? or reducing the amount of work they do.
At present we seem to be going down a ?stick? rather than ?carrot? route in order to raise standards. Is this the right way to go?
Peter Wardle
On these occasions I often wonder if I am working in a different system to everybody else. Curators, for example, have a right of access to development sites providing they are conforming to H&S.
How serious is the problem of ?standards?? I get the impression from reading these threads and other things over the years that the answer is very common. Is this really so? In any system things are going to go wrong and no organisation or individual can produce perfect work on every occasion. Life is just not like that.
I think that what is urgently and continually required is an assessment of how the current system is working. There are a number of easy and quantifiable ways this can be done.
I would argue if on 90% of occasions things are ?acceptable? then there is basically nothing wrong with the system or the people operating it.
If on the other hand things are not acceptable on 90% of cases then clearly the standards are too high.
I think we suffer from the use of anecdotal accounts rather than quantitative analysis.
I also think we have still not bottomed out what quality actually is for example a good quality report will be printed on 90g not 80g paper (does this really matter?).
We also have to consider if things have gone wrong why they have gone wrong and if the situation was avoidable. For example if a project has gone wrong because there was insufficient money it has to be considered if:
1. The information provided was correct
2. was a mistake made
3. was too much risk being taken for the money
4. did circumstances change
5. was the situation contractually unfair
6. The paymaster changed the payment terms and actually paid up
7. or did the people tendering deliberately go into a contract expecting to loose money.
In reality I would suggest that these are all commercial decisions and are not matters for any external body provided that the organisation concerned are grown up enough to accept they are going to make a loss. In particular they must realise that they cannot reduce the loss by ?cutting corners? or reducing the amount of work they do.
At present we seem to be going down a ?stick? rather than ?carrot? route in order to raise standards. Is this the right way to go?
Peter Wardle