Pauses Café

If a project has not been correctly managed for a while, a team will need to perform a fireman job. When this happens, make sure someone (in particular someone with decision and organizational power, like the project manager) keeps the head out of the smoke and control even more the direction of the project. Otherwise all is going to burn down.

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Are there any situations where not being 100% loyal to your project manager is acceptable ? if you take initiative without approval from your hierarchy, are the benefits you potentially bring to a project necessarily out weighted by the potential anarchy you introduce ?

A solder shouldn’t reconsider his orders, right?

And when the conflict is unveiled, both parties should try to avoid getting emotional, should focus on whether the initiative really brought good to the project, and more especially try to understand why do people end up taking initiative. The path to disobedience is not a simple one and soldiers don’t (usually) take it without thinking twice.

A somewhat related entry.

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I’ve never blogged much about management. I guess it’s time to add en new category.

Here are 5 stories one might reflect on.

Shit management

Years ago, one of my clients had to deal with many problems: third party suppliers being late, client not sending the required information on time, etc… You know the drill. I recognize now that I’ve been completely shielded from the problems. Although this created a lot of stress for the 2 persons above me, my productivity was never affected by these external events, as the shit never went down. So kudos to them. The way they handled it was a key factor in the success of their project.

Share the benefits, share the blame

Sometimes sales do not have a stake in the outcome of the project. For example, if the market is good, you get many sales, but maybe no way to find people to do the work, and basically an almost impossible task for operations to fulfill your objectives. Then the implementing team cannot reach the deadline.

But who gets the blame? Certainly not the implementation team alone !

Operations should not have to face the client alone. Sales should. And part of their job should be to ensure the smoothness of the operations, both pro actively (make sure the company can deliver) and afterwards, doing the shit management. Sales should get most of their bonuses at project completion, not just after the sale.

Exactly like in a restaurant. That’s why waiters get the tips. That’s also why the waiter get the tips after the delivery.

Chicken race management

I was talking to a manager some weeks ago who had to deal with impossible deadlines (partly because of sales…). Releases were delayed often if not always. Sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes for several months. I asked what they did to warn the client. Answer: “we warn them t - 2h, because most of the time they are also delayed. They never know.”

The minute I heard this I pictured 2 cars racing against each other. In the best scenario: only one crashes.

Of course this isn’t the right way to solve the problem: no-one wants to learn of a problem so late in the process. So: have regular contacts with your client, and update each other often. And fix your delivery problem issue: be more productive but refuse impossible deadlines.

Resource management and scarcity

When resources are scarce, like in these days for IT, you have to manage them with care. That reminds me of a tale from the end of the 90s where the situation was similar. A friend of mine was being contracted by a company on a project that was critical to the company. His contract was initially for only half of the work and they had to renew it to finish the work. The thing is that the managers in the company assumed that my friend would stay. So the contract ended, and he left without having the opportunity to negotiate the renewal. Both of them lost: he lost a client, they got in trouble and increased their costs.

One advice: be proactive in your resources management ! Don’t take everything for granted !

He’s mine

This friend of mine had a long temporary contract with a company. He wasn’t happy. His relationship with his manager wasn’t particular good as both had different expectations from each other. The manager expected the worker to identify tasks on his own, the employee expected the manager to involve him more in the team and to do regular team meetings. He needed a sense of belonging and some top to bottom management. After a year and 2 meetings, the employee completely lost his motivation and the manager probably lost his confidence in the delivering ability of the employee. The employee tried to raise the issue several times but there probably was some lack of understanding between them.

Before the end of his contract, the employee tried to rebound. He searched for a new position in a different department, in a place where he knew things were done differently and probably would fit him better. He contacted a manager who had an opening matching his skills.

Initially interested, the other manager never came back to him. In fact, the last month, the other manager just avoided giving him any kind of answer. My friend eventually got an offer, but from his current department, which he obviously refused. Not getting an answer from the other manager, my friend got disappointed and in the end took a job in another company.

What he learned afterwards that the other manager was barred from making him an offer as the current department still wanted my friend to work for them.

Worse: this was some kind of non-official but very active rule in the company: if I want him and can’t have him, no-one will !

Gosh….