Why gold plating is not welcome
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Venkatesh Balasubramanian | Mar 19, 2009
Life experiences have always taught us very beautiful lessons, even the ones not studied in B-schools. This has always made me appreciate the immense benefits of learning from unusual sources. This is what my daughter and my wife taught me about ‘gold plating’.
As usual, it was one of those wonderful late evenings with the family and we were all glued to Barclays Premier League match between Manchester United and Liverpool. My wife served me a glass of lassi and after having the same, I requested my daughter to leave the empty glass in the kitchen sink, as I did not want to take my attention away from the match.
As I instructed my daughter, my wife listened to that and asked my daughter not to leave it in the sink, but just on the cooking table. She also told my daughter that, she may not be able to reach the bottom of the sink, so she may break the glass. My daughter went to the kitchen left the glass and came back to the living room and we continued watching the match.
Then, after sometime I heard the sound of glass being shattered, so, had to rush to the kitchen to see if everything was fine. As my daughter and I were going to the kitchen, my wife shouted at my daughter, ‘Did I not ask you to keep the glass on the table?’
In the next 5 minutes, things settled down to normalcy. But, when I was just analysing the situation, the only thing that came to my mind was ‘gold plating’. My wife assumed that my daughter kept the glass on the table, as she had been instructed and kept a big vessel with water in the sink and that had made the glass break. My daughter wanted to do a good job. As she knew that the glass should anyway be kept in the kitchen sink, she stretched a bit and did that, in spite of being asked not to do so.
Even though my daughter had stretched a bit and completed the task in the way it should be done, the customer (my wife) was not happy because my daughter did not do, what she was asked to do. So, my daughter, who was thinking that she should be appreciated for what she did, eventually ended up being scolded. Are you able to draw parallels to one or more of your customer experiences?
Gold plating is what we call it when the project team does work on the product to add features that the requirements didn’t call for, and that the stakeholder and customer didn’t ask for and don’t need. It’s called “gold plating” because of the tendency a lot of companies have to make a product more expensive by covering it in gold, without actually making any functional changes. (For example, there are plenty of watches and fountain pens you can buy from luxury companies that are identical to their cheaper versions, except that they’re covered in gold.) I shamelessly stole the above definition from Andrew Stellman’s blog.
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Venky is a delivery manager at MindTree Limited, having interests in team building, event management, employee engagement and training. An avid blogger too. “Riding the wave” best describes his approach towards life. Visit his website www.venkyb.com.
Filed Under: Miscellaneous
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Great article and a good lesson, especially in todays current economy. There has been too much gold plating and not enough actual work being done!
Just wanted to point out that “Gold Plating” is a term that is common to many industries; you hear thrown around a lot these days in the engineering world.
In fact the Project Management Institute discusses “Gold Plating” in much of its literature. From a Project Management Perspective “Gold Plating” is what ultimately leads to scope creep. Even if you can hide the “gold” within the current scope, generally there will be an impact down the line during product operations. Bottom line, you sold more then the customer was willing to pay for (or could afford) and they will continue to incur costs against there new overcapitalized investment. I call this bad customer service!