that is partially humorous, partially innovative, and if it really works, then it's probably worth a try.
TOM: Well, you know, it was Maura's solution. I am not sure it would be right for anyone else, right for me, but the interesting thing was that that box that sat in front of her door was there all the time. People would ask about it, and it was a constant symbol that it was going to be okay to give bad news to Maura. If you don't do that, then people say, "Oh, the boss is willing to hear bad news, but only of the correctable variety." You know, if you don't give me another person, I'm not going to be able to make the date; as opposed to the uncorrectable variety, which is the date was stupid, we never had a prayer at it, and sure enough, we're not gonna make it.
CAROL: Right. Should we take a caller, Tom? Would you like to?
TOM: Sure.
CAROL: Okay. Diana? Welcome to the show.
CALLER: I'm here. This is Diane. Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate it, Carol. And I appreciate you calling back on me on the calendar. My question for Tom: we here in Melbourne, Florida, are struggling with equally challenging deadlines, and I'll call them opportunities, because I like the way you phrase that. Um, introducing an integrated schedule is somewhat of a new concept we're doing, to marry all the pieces together, and I'm a testing manager. How can I easily depict on a Microsoft Project picture where my risks lie, without giving them too much detail, because management often cannot deal with the details but they can deal with the concept in a picture format.
TOM: Um...I guess. I'm not sure. Microsoft Project is not exactly set up to deal perfectly with the probabilistic nature of things. A better tool might be something like Slim, which is explicitly, QMS's Slim Project, which is explicitly set up for that. You know, I would...I think the right way to call these things to management's attention is to have a very simple tool that is a complement to your Project Schedule, which is a risk list, that says, "Look, there are ten risks that we're looking at." Things that could happen or could happen to some extent, and this is...for instance, people leaving. We've got 45 people and we expect, we in the past, have seen this depart rate and we might expect during the course of the project to lose 6 of the 45, and this is what it would cost us, and if we lose only 2, it will cost us less. To have a list of risks and associated with each one a probabilistic assessment of its cost in time and money.
CAROL: And we'll be back shortly. Diane, you're welcome to stay on. We'll be back shortly after these short messages, and we'll talk more about, "What are those risks, what are the core risks, and risk management." Hi, welcome back to Quality Plus E-Talk, I'm Carol Dekkers. If you're just joining us, you're joining us for the right show of the season. As one of my email recipients, or email senders, said to me, "You keep getting the cream of the crop guests." And today's guest is no exception to that rule at all. "I run a company called Quality Plus Technologies, and we specialize in doing software measurement. And I offered for the past couple of weeks that we have a calendar that links the CMM, the Capability Maturity Model, which Tom
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