Accounting for Variables

“I love it when a plan comes together.”

-          Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, the leader of the fictional mercenary group known as The A-Team

When planning projects and their implementation, you always need to account for variables; the ones you know and the ones you may not expect but should. This is a fundamental principal of mine when I am assisting clients in performance systems’ implementation. This basic understanding was brought to light yesterday as I was heading to my office in downtown Montreal on our city’s new driverless light rail train.

An important characteristic of Montreal’s newest transit option is that there are no conductor and no transit employee on each train. As well, the automated doors are designed to open and close within a certain time interval. Upon arriving at my station during morning rush hour in a packed train, the doors opened and closed within that time interval, leaving half the people who wanted to exit, still on the train, myself included. In addition, anyone wanting to enter, did not get on.

Here lies the failure of the design and implementation of this new system: the light rail system was designed to meet specific time schedules and to do so, they calculated how long a train can stay idle at each station. In a perfect world where the number of people entering and exiting the train is consistent or varies little, then this would be reasonable. Unfortunately, we live in a world where there are variables that need to be taken into consideration. In this case, the significant variance in passengers during rush hour, the most populated stations, the physical ability of individuals to exit/enter in a timely manner, and other factors. A standard automated response to changing variables will fail the system and the intended clients, as happened in this case.

When we are making plans to implement systems, we need to leave room for the unknown variables and have a general idea of how to work around it. Not all solutions can be pre-programmed because not all problems are the same. Flexibility and common sense to deal with variables will help you best achieve a successful implementation and as well, minimize issues when they do occur. If you don’t, you may be left behind that closed door and ending up at the wrong station.