Sometimes we slip.

[Achebe]

Sometimes we @#$k up. I have @#$ked up in a way in which I know not to @#$k up. Although I would like to claim that my summer off from work made me a bit lax, my problem is a mistake that I will have to always fight as a consultant.

People ask you to deliver a certain thing in a certain time. Sometimes you've never worked in a tool of which your mgr assumes you to be the expert. It's a tool that your company wrote. Here. Do it.

Anyway, here's the draft that I just wrote in my mail box. I wrote it thinking I'd send it to my pm at the vendor I'm working through, but... for now I'll post it here, as a monument to my apparently not being a professional. Hopefully the scorn of others will keep me on my toes.

I have found myself in a no-win situation. It is of the same boring variety as most no-win situations when you are a consultant. I was asked to perform a task. The task doesn't really matter. I was asked to perform a task w/ the continual quesitoning over a period of a week: how much longer? Are you almost done with that? I had no idea how to comprehend the scale of the task that I had been given. I was still scratching the surface (I had never worked against the given tool) and had no idea if an assessment of a few days was asinine nor did I know if pushing back for a month was grossly bloated. I just did not know. My on-site manager pushed for a time. He suggested two weeks. I felt the out, it was a time, a concrete time. I accepted the estimation. Then I started to learn more about the product. Huge. Complex. I was screwed. I am screwed. I am writing this as I just now understand what I have gotten myself into. What am to do? I need to break down every element of the task (this will later be the sort of requirements gathering that I will forever now do, and that I know to do, rather than going off of the cuff as I found myself so f@#king ready to do). I need to break down EVERY element of the task. Push out all elements that are impossible to achieve, demand... DEMAND my needs. What are my needs? I need time from person X. I need the following resources: To not be interrupted. I asked for this past week and I did not receive this. This is crucial. If the client doesn't deliver. @#$K him. More time from person X. If I don't get it... I will not deliver. Time to work. Time to focus.

... rereading my 'note to self', I recognize that there's only one way to recognize scale: break down every constituent element in a task. This sounds all fine and dandy... but have any of you been able to get the time to perform the req. gathering w/o the client or boss screwing you?

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"Everyone I know has a big but...

come on Simone, let's talk about your but."

[Dr of Dunk]

You have a line that says "what am to do". You might wanna fix that.

I feel your paaaaaaain, HEB. I'm not gonna scorn you... I've been there.

I notice you're doing requirements gathering. What kind of work do you do? Managerial? Business Analyst?

All companies go through this crap. I worked at a huge telecom company. They had no clue as to what they're doing and they still don't because no one ever estimated the scope of the project. Its scope was monstrous. They however were limited by time. Instead of doing any semblence of risk analysis and thereby paring down the objectives, they basically said, "Here's a billion things that need to be done before we go into production, we have a couple of months to do it... let's do it". Needless to say that QA will be done by the end users who will be the guinea pigs in production (ugh).

It's stories like yours and experiences like mine that still make me want to say "screw corporate America", I'm doing my own thing.

I just haven't found that thing yet...

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I got nothin'.

[Dr of Dunk]

As a side note, I've recently worked on a project in which one of the managers flat out told us that she wanted a huge project plan. I mean it. That was her entire goal... make the project plan big. She wanted tons of test cases. She didn't seem to care what you tested so long as there was a lot of paper being generated.

Needless to say, that compromised my ethics and hell, my career, so I said, "thanks, but no thanks" and left. A shame, too, as the job paid well and the work was fairly easy -- but alas, I'm no one's monkey.

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I got nothin'.

[Grizzled]

Sounds like you need to do some work on your stakeholders' expectations. A wise old PM told me, 'it's better to eat crow when it's young and tender than when it's old and tough.' Work break down structures are good things, so are range estimates, rather than 'it will be done on X.' If you give a range estimate the boss will likely ask what the critical factors are and then you have the opportunity to discuss it and get buy-in and perhaps some support. Let me recommend a good book:

Don't Park Your Brain Outside: A Practical Guide to Improving Shareholder Value With S.M.A.R.T. Management
by Francis T. Hartman

It's full of good tips and approaches to effective PM, including project charters, managing stakeholder expectations, obtaining buy-ins etc. It's aimed at the IT biz and the construction biz and is used extensively by KPMG.

Good Luck!


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