The IKEA Analogy

[authorBox image=”http://uzuner-solutions.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Sarah-Nagel-anonyme-Projektleiterin.jpg” name=”Sarah Nagel”]Sarah Nagel works as a project manager for our company – and she has moved recently. After buying some furnishing items, she engaged us in a discussion about how to complete projects of any kind even more successfully.[/authorBox]

Why Shopping Sprees at IKEA are similar to the Project Management in a Software Company

I went to IKEA the other day. I bought a lot. I mean A LOT. It ended up being a shopping spree because I had just moved and, needless to say, a half-empty apartment is anything but comfortable.
As a project manager I know how to go about such major projects, so I applied all my process know-how to my shopping at IKEA.

I had many nice hours full of dragging, tugging, rummaging and running around. And when I finally came home in the evening with all the new stuff, standing in the middle of all the chaos, I realized: Despite all the tough conditions, I got more or less almost everything I had wanted – just that one product had the wrong color and another one was missing. How did that happen? Why did the project „Buying all desired IKEA products in a specific version” fail?

The “lessons learned” phase is part of every project. That’s why I want to explain which lesson I have learned in this case.

Demand Analysis and Road Map

In true project leader style, I drew on my experiences to prepare my shopping at IKEA: I knew already that, under certain conditions, an IKEA visit could be pretty stressful – and exactly these conditions were given: As I belong to the working population, I could only go there on a Saturday. And we all know what that means… exactly: Hell!

Going to IKEA on a Saturday isn’t a big help if you want to complete many tasks in a calm and focused way. But still: You make an effort and you’re prepared. My preparation was a list. A brilliant list in so far as it did not only contain all the items I wanted to buy, but also

a) contained only those items that were actually available at IKEA, and

b) listed them in the right order.

The latter is especially clever as it avoids running back and forth, going through the whole list again and again and having to return to the entrance when you are already in the furniture hall. Of course, all my former shopping experiences at IKEA helped me a lot in preparing this awesome list.

Implementation and Quality Check

Confident of success, I went to IKEA, just to be surprised by a disruptive factor beyond my control: Rain! An IKEA visit on a rainy Saturday means going through absolute hell: The whole store turns into a jungle of products, shop assistants, OTHER CUSTOMERS, and so on.

Nevertheless, I did well and left Cologne with the feeling that I completed my project successfully.

After I had carried all the stuff into my apartment and had started to throw a funny IKEA-furniture-assembling-party, I came to understand: Mistakes happen even to the best of us.

For one thing, the frame of my new wardrobe was white, but I wanted one of aluminum. After all, I had taken the package from the aluminum shelf, hadn’t I? For another thing, I didn’t buy a shoe rack, although it had been on my list. What went wrong?

Bug Report

So, I saw the shoe rack in the furniture exhibition. It didn’t have the location numbers on it (which is obviously not my fault!), but I still wrote it down, next to all the other things I wanted to pick up at the furniture hall – just without the numbers. I planned on looking them up later myself because I realized that no IKEA employee would be available any time soon. However, after that I had to remember many other things and react to other unforeseen circumstances.

In the end, I didn’t look for the shoe rack in the furniture hall. And why’s that? Because I only scanned my list for location numbers. And as there was no number for the shoe rack, I just ignored it. When I had worked through the columns and loaded two shopping carts, I just didn’t pay attention anymore to the last row with the shoe rack.

However, what I did pick up was the frame for my new wardrobe. I had written down the location numbers for the aluminum frames and went to the right shelf. There were two packages. One was torn open, so I took the other, the last one, considering myself lucky. I was so happy indeed that I didn’t perform a quality check, i.e. verify that the package contained what it was supposed to contain.

And when I was standing in my apartment, with a white frame and without a shoe rack, I thought: If I had gone to IKEA just for the frame and the shoe rack, I would have taken my time, checked carefully, and bought the right things. But these two items were just two out of many others and that’s why I couldn’t pay enough attention to them.

Lesson Learned: Meaning for the Everyday Project Work and Future IKEA visits

Things like that happen – also in projects. If you didn’t have to care about deadlines, you could check everything repeatedly, and probably you would overlook almost nothing. But such an approach takes time and money, and both are goods that every customer can only provide to a limited extent. This can lead to time pressure, budget overruns and other unpleasant occurrences – factors which can make project management really difficult.

Experience

So, what can we do to avoid mistakes like that in the future? First, learn from the experience. Next time, I will remember checking not only every package, but also my list very carefully again to see if I’m really done before I proceed to the checkout and finish my project.

In the everyday project jungle, this experience from former IKEA visi… um… I mean… projects can also be helpful. If you already know where problems may come up, you can prepare accordingly. You can check for traps the developer may have overlooked, so that you are “feature complete” (shoe rack) and “bug free” (wardrobe frame) in the end, which will improve the quality of the product. This doesn’t only make your work easier, but also makes you more successful.

Otherwise you may find yourself without a shoe rack at the end of your project. Or without a validation for an input field. Or without a logout button.

Good Cost Estimate

Second: There are projects which can’t be completed within the given budget or time frame. Sometimes, this is predictable. In that case, you have to accept that more money or time is needed to fulfill every wish.
Therefore, it ‘s better to estimate budget and time – if possible – rather realistically than optimistically right from the start. Wasting time in the beginning often leads to extra work on weekends.

Outstanding Customer Service

And what about the white wardrobe frame? When I was at home, I couldn’t wait to assemble the wardrobe. Therefore, I have a white frame now. If I was a customer and someone would have delivered the wrong frame, I would have complained. And so would my clients in the project business. Therefore, I shouldn’t make such mistakes at work. Needless to say, in that case I couldn’t just use what it’s there, but I would have to send a special task force to IKEA to get the right stuff. However, at best, lesson 1 and 2 prevent any problems.

The next IKEA visit

Luckily, I don’t have to do such a shopping spree at IKEA again in the near future because my apartment is furnished now. With a white frame. (Meanwhile, I bought the shoe rack, highly concentrated.)