TBH I strongly disagree with OP’s suggestion that 95% reliability is low / bad, at least read literally. I personally definitely fail verbal ‘soft commitments’ (“I expect this will be done by end of week”) with way more than 5% rate; probably more like 20-30. Part of it is being in business where hidden complexity strikes at any time, and estimating is hard; part of it is because of cultural communication norms.
If you ignore soft commitments, then the easy way to improve reliability is to make less hard commitments. Instead of “I’ll definitely be there at 9 am sharp”, say “I’ll do my best to be there at 9 am”. Manage expectations. Then if you have to message them 30 mins before that you’re stuck in traffic / running late, your reliability is not impacted.
For stuff with really hard acceptance criteria (you actually have to be there for 9 am, because the plane won’t wait), the right way to improve reliability is to build fault tolerant systems; make a soft commitment to be there an hour before, or have more people work on a problem than you expect to be necessary.
TBH I strongly disagree with OP’s suggestion that 95% reliability is low / bad, at least read literally. I personally definitely fail verbal ‘soft commitments’ (“I expect this will be done by end of week”) with way more than 5% rate; probably more like 20-30. Part of it is being in business where hidden complexity strikes at any time, and estimating is hard; part of it is because of cultural communication norms.
If you ignore soft commitments, then the easy way to improve reliability is to make less hard commitments. Instead of “I’ll definitely be there at 9 am sharp”, say “I’ll do my best to be there at 9 am”. Manage expectations. Then if you have to message them 30 mins before that you’re stuck in traffic / running late, your reliability is not impacted.
For stuff with really hard acceptance criteria (you actually have to be there for 9 am, because the plane won’t wait), the right way to improve reliability is to build fault tolerant systems; make a soft commitment to be there an hour before, or have more people work on a problem than you expect to be necessary.