Fake sense of urgency

(image courtesy:labs.gerbenrobijn.nl)

I had a very frustrating day in office today. I do totally understand that my project is not an ideal one. It a great specimen for a totally dysfunctional project. A prefect case study on what a project should NOT be. Add a client who doesn't give a damn about the project, you get yourself a project with no end. Frustrated team, bone headed managers, making the same mistake over and over again.

After years and years of scope creeps, no proper requirement gathering or requirement sign-offs. The project has still not seen the light of the day. There's no direction to project, just bogus Go-Live dates. Wastage of resources on weekends in a very desperate attempt to show the top brass a fake 'sense of urgency'.

With just days before the latest or the newest 'Go-Live' date, we are still suffering from scope creep. Everyday there is a new requirement, a new change, that is being added on to the scope. What we end up doing is add on to what we have to deliver and later end up fixing issues caused by proper impact analysis to new changes we take in.

Dear Client,

I know we messed up, we have two of your lines of businesses ready for you ready to use. We'll make amends to whatever we have not catered to on a priority basis in the coming releases. But we want you to start using the product and provide us with your feedback. Lets not complicate the roll out and the transition by adding more to the current scope. The current approach is not helping either of us in anyway.

Now this would work if:

• Our client is from some Bollywood movie.
• We have shown some credibility in what we done so far.
• We were professional enough and not act like greedy mercenaries trying to con the client with 'interim' solutions and 'temporary fixes'
• If we have a good Customer facing team managing customer expectations.
• A good Project Management team.

Is there a way out for us. I don't think so, IT industry in itself is a filthy industry with no credibility. It's a industry where no one owns up a project failure but you'd find many to own up a project success. It's an industry where blame chains play a far more important role than root cause analysis. CRs and Billing rates means more than what the 'Customer really wants'. Deadlines will whoosh past you. Deadlines would like seasons that come and go and never a date that has to be met. And most important, there will always be somebody to blame. So nobody gets fired for the project being delayed for all these years. 'Dud for brains' Project managers will still be managing projects.

There will still be bad days in your project where you still feel like pulling your hair out. So rather than wasting your energy worrying about this. Enjoy the 'free' internet access and occasionally crib about how much your work sucks, as you enjoy the fat paychecks for doing almost close to nothing.

Advantage YOU!!!