Our delivery team hits their project completion deadlines on the Scorecard, but clients complain about poor quality and staff spend hours on rework. What measurable forces visibility into delivery quality?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Tracking project completion dates without measuring delivery quality creates a perverse incentive for staff to push flawed work across the finish line just to mark their weekly Scorecard green. The deadline is met, but margin is destroyed through unbudgeted rework, warranty fixes, and client frustration.

To restore visibility, add a weekly First-Time-Right percentage or Unplanned Rework Hours metric to your operations seat on the Scorecard.

First-Time-Right measures the percentage of client deliverables accepted on the initial presentation with zero material revisions, bugs, or scope defects. If your team finishes ten client deliverables this week, but four require corrective revisions before the client signs off, your First-Time-Right score is sixty percent. That number flashes bright red on the Scorecard, regardless of whether the initial draft was submitted on time.

Alternatively, track internal rework hours logged in your time-tracking system. When engineers or technicians spend twelve hours fixing an internal error on a fixed-price contract, that time cannot disappear into general overhead. It must be tracked under a dedicated rework code and reported as an operational metric.

When the operations seat on your Accountability Chart is forced to report First-Time-Right or rework hours during the weekly Level 10 Meeting™, the team stops sweeping quality defects under the rug. You can then use IDS® to identify broken handoffs, inadequate training, or rushed quality assurance before client relationships are permanently damaged.