Flu Vaccine: Shortage or Overestimate?

Posted by Robert Merrill on October 26, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

Once again, reality fails to conform to plan, even in the case of something seemingly similar to something done every year—the manufacture and distribution of influenza vaccine.

In “Swine Flu Vaccine Shortage: Why?” on NPR.org, we learn that late-in-the-process verification of actual yields, and a bottleneck at the packaging stage, have led to a late-in-the-lifecycle discovery that we don’t have nearly as much vaccine as we expected to have by now.

It will be interesting to watch the story unfold. Here are my predictions of what we will learn:

• The originally estimated delivery timeline wasn’t aggressive enough, so some usual steps were cut out of the schedule to make the planned vaccine delivery schedule shorter
• Some of the omitted steps had to do with process and yield checks that would have caught the large-scale production problems earlier, minimizing their impact on the actual delivery schedule
• Some people closest to the process knew this, pointed it out last summer, and were outranked

I prefer to believe it was all a well-intended mistake, and not some individual trying to make a name for themselves, or some company trying to snag a contract by gambling they could deliver on the tighter schedule.

Now think about something much less important—the budgets and schedules for our software projects. Why do we continue to set “aggressive” schedules? In the kick-off meeting, it’s always, “We have an aggressive schedule.” And it’s usually said with a trace of excitement and pride, not nervousness. Why do we do this? It’s like going down to the track, and wondering why anybody would pay $2 for a $4.50 horse when there’s an $80 horse available for the same price. Who are we kidding?

Steve McConnell, in his still-excellent book Rapid Development, pointed out in 1996 that excessive schedule pressure actually slows projects down and drives costs through the roof. And he was citing 15-year-old projects and 30-year-old books.

What if schedule pressure actually delayed the availability of H1N1 influenza vaccine? What if our going all-in on the possibility of having it in October caused it to actually be available in February instead of November?

I’m intrigued by the words we use to describe gaps between expectations and reality. The article wasn’t called “Swine Flu Vaccine Plan Overly Optimistic: Why?”

And I’ve never read the headline, “Audit Reveals Software Project Plan Cheaper and Faster than Reality.”