Short Term Help
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[edit] Problem
When people who are not personally invested in your project never the less must be hired to fill a short term role it creates potential for additional complications
[edit] Context
Whenever you bring help in on a project that is not part of the project team you are adding a person who very likely is not vested in the success of the project. If the person is professional about their work this is a non-issue. However it is sometimes hard to tell if someone is professional or not before you see them at work, and by then the damage is often already done.
[edit] Discussion
Ideally when working on a project you work with a team of people who understand the needs of the project and work to meet those needs. Sometimes however you need to farm out pieces of work that cannot be done by your core team members. On larger projects there are often lots of one to four hour tasks that must be completed before the project can move forward. You may need to have a building inspector come in and check the foundation before you buy or maybe you need to conduct short marketing study groups. Whatever the reason, in these circumstances you will face a special kind of problem. People who are not personally invested in your project have little motivation to make sure it succeeds. The building inspector may be late and force you to reschedule, or half of your scheduled study group people might decide at the last minuet that they would rather spend Saturday afternoon bowling. Whatever the reason, you have to be ready to deal with the actions of people who are necessary to the success of your project but are not vested in its success
[edit] Solution
The best way to deal with this problem is to use people you personally know and have a professional relationship with. When this is not a option, use contracts and have meetings to discuses what their role will be in the project. It may take more time to be this cautious but it will save time in the long run. If you are doing a project were you have to test some new product, like a food or a video game, make sure you pay well enough that you will motivate people to turn up when they’re supposed to. If this is too costly and you have a excess of people hours you can always start your testing sooner to allow for the potential tardiness and make up for it by doing testing for longer.
