Salt II

[legion]

Original thread here:

http://wiki.pelicanparts.com/showthread.php?t=658230&highlight=Salt

(For as long as this link works.)

Going back to November, ADL asked me if I could get a huge development effort done to be released in January. Considering that it would take me 400 hours (or roughly 4 months of doing almost nothing but this), I told him no, the timeline was not feasible. We agreed to instead work towards a June release, which was feasible.

I got all of the development work and testing done ahead of schedule, including some major rework. Our testing team was right on schedule. During this time, ADL's protege was my contact and responsible for ensuring I delivered the correct product. Starting two months ago, I began asking the protege to begin his user acceptance testing, as it is due May 4th. Every time I met with him (about twice a week), I asked him to provide me with his test cases and what data he needed to test with, so I could start getting things ready for his testing.

The protege is a huge procrastinator, by his own admission. He has always gotten away with starting his testing very late because he has either been testing small changes or the release has been postponed. No such luck this time. He elected to start drafting his test cases on Tuesday, and I worked with him yesterday to identify his data needs. We ran the first test case this morning. Low and behold, we discovered that he had some additional requirements that he never communicated. At this point, his only two choices are to accept the product as-is, or to pull it from the release. There is no time for rework and retesting.

Upon further research, I discovered that releasing it as-is is not an option. When I left work, the protege was meeting with ADL to explain to him that because of his procrastination (which I have documented, so I have no fear if he tries to blame me), this product will have to be pulled.

This product was a six-month stop-gap until a more permanent solution could be developed and deployed at the beginning of next year (an effort I am not involved in). The thing I haven't told the protege yet is that the next release this product is eligible for goes live in the middle of November. It would only be live for a month and a half. It no longer has a positive ROI.

The bottom line is the protege's procrastination wasted four months of my time (and less of other people's time to varying degrees) and lost us the opportunity to save millions of dollars.

It looks like I will have to start the process of backing-out the change on Monday. Pulling the code is easy, but undoing the database changes will take some time to get ready, and I'm sure I'll have to attend dozens of meetings where I explain why this had to be pulled to various Change Managers and Release Managers.

[stomachmonkey]

That sucks.

Hope ADL is not the kind who will still blame you, "if you knew he was late and the project was in jeopardy you should have escalated it to me"

[MRM]

Of course he will. Legion should have moved heaven and earth to make sure he was part of the meeting where protege had to report the problem to the big boss. Legion never stood a chance. The fix will be in before he gets in to work tomorrow. His only hope is to get to his own patron quickly with his documentation that protege is at fault and see if he can trump protege and ADL with his patron and documentation.

Legion, if you don't have a patron, you better find one quick.

[legion]

Originally Posted by MRM

Legion, if you don't have a patron, you better find one quick.

I have several. I've kept my management in the loop from the very beginning as "this was a problem last time". My test manager also knows exactly what is going on. Besides my e-mails going back two months asking what he needed to start testing, and his e-mail this Tuesday asking for help with testing, I think I have my bases covered.

Oh, and then there's the change record itself. Every other form of testing is marked at 100% complete. Even if he marked his complete today, it will still show the timestamp he marked it complete.

[legion]

Oh, and I picture that the meeting went something like this:

[MRM]

Good. An enemy must be assuaged or annihilated. You can't be friends with protege after a screw up like this. You have to destroy him now do that he never comes back. Good luck. You can't look like you're having fun as you destroy him or you'll lose credibility, but you can enjoy it after you're done.

[stomachmonkey]

No offense Chris.

You don't always get a pass if you let someone screw up. If you had reason to believe the project was in jeopardy you have some accountability. You had to know that their was a date, that once missed, if testing failed the project was toast.

Don't get me wrong, based on your previous postings you are the kind of guy that I would love to have in my group or be able to work with.

One day one of my sales guys tells me he increased an order by $400,000 by promising a retail program for the customer.

Problem was the 2 possible scopes dictated 2 different production/manufacturing processes.

Told him I needed the numbers as soon as possible so I could line up the correct vendors and build a plan.

Asked him every few days, "I'm working on it" he would say.

I knew things were getting tight since the street date for the product was getting close.

Sales guy finally gets the info I need but now it's too late to get it done the way it needs to be done and we risk losing a **** ton of money.

Tell him he needs to push the date, what he needs is not possible. He says the date can't be pushed, if we try we lose the 400k.

I start to tell him tough ****, he's screwed and it dawned on me. There is no way in hell that my CEO is going to accept losing $400,000 because I could not get it done. The fact that it's the sales guys fault did not matter. I'm the one that did not get it done.

I called in every favor I could and only missed the launch date by 1 day.

We collected on the increased order.

I learned a valuable lesson. That's the last time I let someone put me in that position.

I make my schedules, I put in red flag dates, you miss my red flag dates and I escalate.

I will no longer put my job at risk for someone else's f ups.

I make it their bosses problem and guess what, **** gets done.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by legion

I have several. I've kept my management in the loop from the very beginning as "this was a problem last time". My test manager also knows exactly what is going on........

OK, sounds like your management owns the escalation accountability here, not you.

If they did take it to the ADL then he's screwed.

I think you're covered.

[Quicksilver]

Originally Posted by legion

Oh, and I picture that the meeting went something like this:

I'm actually guessing the meetings are 'lighter, happier' get togethers like this...



---

Originally Posted by MRM

Good. An enemy must be assuaged or annihilated. You can't be friends with protege after a screw up like this. You have to destroy him now do that he never comes back. Good luck. You can't look like you're having fun as you destroy him or you'll lose credibility, but you can enjoy it after you're done.

You need to negate the opposition but it is very important to remain completely emotionally detached about it or your apparent wish to clear them from the field will weaken your position with many connected parties.

The best advice I ever got for corporate infighting was, "Direct and specific". Argue against points not people. If you make unemotional, direct, and specific points in an argument people who rail against them are basically throwing themselves on their own sword. The hotter they get the more they sink. Adding the "broken record" technique where you repeat a basic core point repeatedly as someone tries to talk around it or ignore it, lets them basically lose their argument for you.

All in all it seems that a move to another company where the culture doesn't have as much intestinal blockage would further your career and more importantly give you much greater satisfaction. Remember that when you look back at what you have done you won't have good memories of "surviving". The parts that add up to something are successes, good times with the family, and great vacations.

[Bill Douglas]

You people with a proper job; it sounds terribly complicated.

[Tishabet]

Oh man, Legion and Stomachmonkey are telling the story of my professional life right here. I feel you, guys.

[legion]

I can physically get all of the work done to get in the next release. The problem our change process, which because of the missed milestones, would take an act of God (or a meeting with some vice presidents) to get done. There is no way that ADL or his protege want to have to explain this to a VP.

To further complicate things, ADL and his protege are in a different department, so all I can do is ask them nicely to do their work and escalate when they don't. I have done both.

So, in order to get permission to continue, ADL and company would have to basically make the case to executives that they screwed up but this is too important to not do. Once again, they will never publicly admit the failure, so this will die.

[flipper35]

I know this wasn't your intent, but boy do I appreciate my job more.

[legion]

So...after lots of ass-covering and bullying, ADL gets this disaster slated for the next release, which gave me exactly three weeks to get my coding and testing done...again. I get the testing and coding done based on what was at the time the current version of the requirements. (You know where this is going.)

Three weeks later and I'm in exactly the same boat.

Thursday at 3:00 the protege sends me an e-mail telling me that I need to completely rework a big section of the program based on a sudden revelation (most likely from ADL--as this has his burning desire to deliver a 100% solution at any cost all over it). That, and there are big, gaping holes in these new requirements that would probably take months to drive out. After a quick visit with my manager, I fire off a response that says that I have nothing even remotely approaching the time to get this done as the deadline was Friday. (Let's not even get into the fact that this request will make the end product not work as well.) Once again, there choice is to pull it from the release or go with it as-is.

Then, being thoroughly sick of this bull$h!t, I decide on the spot to make this a 4-day weekend, fill out my vacation request, and leave.

There was no chance of having these new requirements in any sort of usable shape AND have the massive changes coded AND tested by EOD Friday. I fully expect to have dozens of angry e-mails and voicemails when I get in on Tuesday. I don't feel the least bit bad as I got to put off all vacation for the first 5 months of this year to deal with this steaming pile of excrement while ADL rode his motorcycle to Anchorage via Las Vegas and back. I fully expect to be told repeatedly by ADL and the protege to get all of their changes done AND get it into the release even though I am now past the deadline for doing so.

What irritates me the most is that this software is only going to live until the end of the year. No one seems to be paying attention to the fact that it is getting massively more expensive to develop and the payback period is shrinking.