The journey to get started in a genAI project is a long and difficult one. Finally, you get approved for a genAI budget – covering internal and external people, technology, with a defined timeline and scope. We learn often how to manage a successful team, budget, timeline, and scope. Instead, let’s learn how to completely blow that budget from real project examples.
Lack Customer Support
A servant leader is a person that services people. For example, as a project manager, we serve the team members to help them grow and mature. That includes providing warm welcome and send-off. How does that relate to wasting project funds?
All teams tend to have an on-boarding processes. If you don’t have any on-boarding process for your project – get one. Take into consideration the type of forms that need to be submitted. The instructions need to be step-by-step instructions with images to minimize confusing. The guided instructions are more important when on-boarding external people. They don’t know your organization, tools, or processes. You are paying for that down time.
The opposite is true for departing members. Too often, projects end abruptly due to changes in budget, conflicting priority, and scheduling. How often are documentations completed? A hardened requirements in many technology projects is Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes. What about the instructions to address potential issues, fixes, and maintenance? I invoke the Continuous Documentation (CDoc) to apply a continuous approach to capture project knowledge, thoughts, insights, and lessons learned.
An objective to onboarding is to aim for 3-days or less. Take into consideration the following:
- Identify the length of time to get access to hardware
- List submission process for requesting the appropriate role, access, and permissions
- How to leverage help desk efficiently – hardware vs software support
- Instructions to getting started – technology usage, login requirements, team cadence, key milestone, and deliverable
For departing team members, take into consideration the following:
- Identify and plan a transitional period – left seat/right seat
- Provide a gradual roll off of responsibilities
- The last day of the departing member to be a half-day
- Team member roll off to be early or middle of the week
Be Like the DaVinci Code
A factor of project success is communication. If you don’t want success, make communication difficult or non-existent. As a servant leader, speak in abstract to include project milestones, requests, actions, and vision. In addition, keep information hidden or you don’t inform the team about future changes or events. Too often the tactical zone – hands on keyboard – speak about every grain of sand without providing any indication of progress or “almost” completed tasks. This is sometimes called “smoke screen and mirrors” communication.
How do you solve for communication?
- Let others practice communicating the vision & mission of the project
- Minimize plan change
- Request feedback in your presentation
- Use clear and direct language
- Show a demo, not code
Keep Moving the Goal Post
When you don’t want to make project deadlines, apply the scope creep method. Keep adding new features and requests based on external feedback or from the latest tech article (RAG 3.0, Llama3, etc.). Never hold true to defined requirements and activities. Invalidate any concerns from the teams. If the technology is new, expect the team to build the capabilities as a proven technology that has a plethora of resources and references.
For the tactical team, the recommendation is to apply the gold plating method. Add new functions and features to the project that was not required, requested, or identified as part of the plan. The team wants to impress the people in the operational and strategic zone but at a high risk of creating a half-made solutions with issues, bugs, and rework.
How to solve the moving goal post?
- Identify key functions and features
- Adhere to the scheduled task (agile sprint)
- Apply to incremental changes based on available time and planning
- Leverage a change order to adjust scope or timeline
- Develop to defined and assigned tasks
- Leverage a backlog to monitor and track future changes
Have the Lights Turned on 24/7
We are all learning and experiencing the actual cost of generative AI – it is very expensive. So many companies are claiming “cheap” or “low cost” for implement but provide limited information on cost in relation to scaling and licensing the technology to meet demand. Cloud provides have enabled technology or created new technology to handle the process and management of genAI solutions from genAI optimal databases, model selection, model training, data processing, hosting, and API.
From a cloud perspective, the model is pay-to-play. In other words, you are paying to use the technology and in some cases to have it available to be used at any moment. Large models that are 20B, 40B, or 70B parameters and above require very powerful GPU. By having the GPU readily available, you are incurring an hourly or daily cost. The larger the GPU, the higher the rate.
How to save on the electric bill?
- Establish budget alerts. Seriously, establish budget alerts!
- Establish team standards to stand up and tear down services
- Create automated processed to shut down services
- Use smaller models. Once the process has been proven in a positive direction, scale as needed
- Identify target groups – save on licenses by purchasing what you expect to use with reserves
Overall, we all want to have a successful project. Sometimes, the actions we take are the ones causing the most harm, delays, and pain points. Every team member has an objective, role, and responsibility. It is important to establish trust, clear communication, and work together to make it to the finish line.
Want to know more? I’m here to help! I love building things with tech that make work easier and more fun. Let’s chat and see how genAI can change the way you work!
