SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge Program Managers - You'll Love this Head Banging "Are you kidding me?" Situation...
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The Unmanned Writer |
Have some engineers who, in the Statement of Work, explained a deliverable as "Contractor format is acceptable" without any stipulations. Contractor used a DoD form to deliver. Form has all required information and is readable on a computer. Some info is cut off when a hard copy is printed. First comments from some senior engineers, "we want them to deliver on our company form XYZ." Me, "Nope. You stated in the SOW contractor format is acceptable. Be happy because they could have written down the information on a bar room napkin." Them, "Well, it can't be printed out. Now they need to change the format." Me, "Nope. You stated in the SOW contractor format is acceptable. Be happy because they could have written down the information on a bar room napkin." Them, "Well, what does "contractor format actually mean." Me, "They could have written down the information on a bar room napkin and taken a picture with their phone as the delivery." Them, "What's that banging we hear in the background?" Me, "My head banging on my desk, why are you changing the subject?" Eff'ing directors who don't read the SOW(s) they approve!!!!! Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. "If dogs don't go to Heaven, I want to go where they go" Will Rogers The definition of the words we used, carry a meaning of their own... | ||
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Member |
The phrase, "Steve, you are exactly right, but we're not going to do it that way" is what set in motion my departure from the Fortune 50 world. Steve Small Business Website Design & Maintenance - https://spidercreations.net | OpSpec Training - https://opspectraining.com | Grayguns - https://grayguns.com Evil exists. You can not negotiate with, bribe or placate evil. You're not going to be able to have it sit down with Dr. Phil for an anger management session either. | |||
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Member |
I run into this all the time where folks don't read emails or pay attention to request forms. The best is when they put a vague statement like "the program is not working". If they could explain their issue it would save me a phone call or 700 back and forth emails. Most of the time I feel like a babysitter or a detective trying to pull info out of people to help them with their issues. In war, truth is the first casualty. Aeschylus Greek tragic dramatist (525 BC - 456 BC) | |||
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Member |
Why don't you just help them out? Why not fix the formatting problem? So the requirements you've sent over are unreadable, don't bitch when your deliverables are crap.  Hedley Lamarr: Wait, wait, wait. I'm unarmed. Bart: Alright, we'll settle this like men, with our fists. Hedley Lamarr: Sorry, I just remembered . . . I am armed. | |||
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אַרְיֵה |
Many years ago, I was team technical lead on a software project that the company I worked for was doing for San Francisco's BART fare collection system. We never met with the BART folks prior to the project; I took my direction from the System Requirements document that they provided. I scratched my head over one of the interface descriptions. Couldn't for the life of me, figure why in the world they would specify an interface as klutzy as they did. I kept thinking that I was not reading it correctly, I conferred with several people in my company, and we were all in agreement about what they wanted. OK, I designed the software interface to do exactly what they wanted. The system was implemented and tested, everything worked, we submitted it to the customer along with our invoice. We had an acceptance meeting, first time I came face to face with them. They had given us a review document, and they really slammed me on the terrible interface design. I did not say anything, just sat there and let them rant, while the president of my company glared at me, thinking that I had done a lousy job. Finally, when it was my turn to speak, I asked everybody to open the Requirements Document to the section starting on page 47, and walked them through it, paragraph by paragraph, showing how my design was exactly what they had requested. The conference room got very quiet. You could have heard a pin drop. Company president got a big smile on his face when I stated that we had done what BART requested, if they wanted to re-specify the interface, I would get back to them with an additional quote for a re-design to meet their revised requirements. הרחפת שלי מלאה בצלופחים | |||
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Optimistic Cynic |
Having been in similar situations many times in my Govt. contracting days: --- Hey contractor, bring me a rock, I need it today! No not that rock, you idiot, bring me the rock I need! Why did you bring me a whole pile of rocks? I only need one. What am I paying you for? I can't believe you cannot perform the plain and simple task of bringing me a rock! No, I won't describe it. If I knew what it looked like, I'd do it myself. Are you going to bring me a rock or do I have to arrange a cure letter? Why did you call the CO for a mod to change your FFP contract to T&M? --- Unjust? Irrational? Of course. But, isn't making the customer happy the paramount objective? Kind of "the golden rule." | |||
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Comic Relief |
I saw that many times as a software developer. "We don't know (or can't articulate) what we want, but we know this is not it." If you can't give me your exact requirements, how can I meet them? | |||
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| The Unmanned Writer |
Changing requirements cost money.  And yup, these are the same engineers who'll ask, "why do we need to add status meetings and schedule deliveries in the SOW, isn't that part of them managing their part of the requirements?" "Nope, you don't ask them to bid a 60-minute,, bi-weekly meeting for technical and schedule status, you're not going to hear anything until the stuff is delivered." "But, but, but, ...we don't want to spend that much money. Can't they just do it for us?" Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. "If dogs don't go to Heaven, I want to go where they go" Will Rogers The definition of the words we used, carry a meaning of their own... | |||
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| The Unmanned Writer |
Ding, ding, ding, ding!!! Different subject, same story.  Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. "If dogs don't go to Heaven, I want to go where they go" Will Rogers The definition of the words we used, carry a meaning of their own... | |||
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Info Guru |
But did you put a cover sheet on the TPS report? I'll make sure you get another copy of the memo... “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” - John Adams | |||
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| Member |
Now I think you're talking to my current customer! Hedley Lamarr: Wait, wait, wait. I'm unarmed. Bart: Alright, we'll settle this like men, with our fists. Hedley Lamarr: Sorry, I just remembered . . . I am armed. | |||
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| Go ahead punk, make my day |
I try to be reasonable with the Government drones but when the COR carries around a copy of the SOW, that's all they are ever going to get unless they pay more money... | |||
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| Member |
So few companies read their own RFP. The engineers write the specks and by the time the supply chain people get done with it and add the couple hundred pages of requirements, disclaimers and legalize, no one really reads the whole document. That is how some companies survive. They bid low, deliver the absolute minimum and lousy crap specified in the document and stand around and wait for the change orders to make a profit. | |||
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| Go ahead punk, make my day |
Especially when the award criteria is price above all else. Nothing says "DO ONLY THE BARE MINIMUM, ONLY WELL ENOUGH TO NOT GET FIRED" than LPTA. | |||
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Shall Not Be Infringed |
I'll just leave this here....   ____________________________________________________________ If Some is Good, and More is Better.....then Too Much, is Just Enough !! Trump 2024....Make America Great Again! "May Almighty God bless the United States of America" - parabellum 7/26/20 Live Free or Die! | |||
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Nullus Anxietas |
I once was lead software designer on what became known in the company as the Project From Hell. What happened was the sales dept. agreed to a rather sophisticated project based on a design specification without passing it by the engineering dept. first. When I say "design specification" I'm being generous. Then they sat the customer's project managers down with our design team to hammer-out the functional specification. (For those who don't know how software development projects are supposed to work: This isn't it.) They left the sales dept. out at this point. That was a mistake, because the sales dept. knew what they'd sold the customer, whereas the customer thought they'd bought something else entirely. As a result: Every time our design team asked the customer's project managers what some aspect of the design spec. meant from a functional perspective, of course their people came up with an answer that was most advantageous to them. We went along with their answers, because, after all, they certainly knew what they'd purchased, right? The result was a project of such a magnitude that, had it been quoted correctly from the start, and our company had actually quoted it based on the actual requirements, should have cost many times what we quoted and for which the customer agreed. Eventually upper management became aware of what had happened and freaked out. By then it was way too late. The project was delivered, and was delivered on-time. But it was hell getting it done and ran way, way over-budget. That project was thereafter referred-to in terms of "We don't want a repeat of ``Project X`` again," "Remember ``Project X?``" and the like. "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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| Member |
As a daily BART rider for 15 years until COVID and Bay Area resident/taxpayer for last ~46 years this doesn’t surprise me AT ALL. Bart is the most inefficient, bloated and overall inept government agency. Their executives make the DMV look like rocket surgeons. Granted the current crew is dealing with a 50 year old system designed for a fraction of the daily ridership but they can’t/won’t fix anything meaningful. Don’t get me started on the fact their track gauge is special to BART only and similar systems like the one in DC can’t use the same off the shelf train cars. They have to be custom adjusted to fit The oddball guage.
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Member |
I thought that was my project. Wrap your head around this one. I used to work for a huge financial software company. They signed the following project (which was assigned to me) that was turned down by every single one of our competitors.Simultaneous software, hardware, and operations conversion of '2' banks (the $15B primary bank and a $2B bank that was being acquiring). 107 branch locations plus three operational centers. Primary bank was running an in house, defunct, no longer supported software system that had been cobbled together with custom code for the past ten years and for which there was little to no documentation. Bank being acquired was running in a datacenter environment, on a completely different software system, and most of its senior/key staff had quit. Normal project timetable for a single bank conversion of the size of the primary bank, 8-10 months. Required project timeline for the two bank conversion, 5-6 months. This project forced me to quit working for the company I'd worked for for almost 6 years, and which in the end, almost bankrupted the company. It was by far the biggest disaster ever executed by the company, and I knew I would have been the scapegoat when it failed had I stuck around. More to the ops comments, managing customer expectations separates the rookies and hacks from the pros when it comes to project/program managers. Its far and away the most difficult aspect of running large projects. ----------------------------- Guns are awesome because they shoot solid lead freedom. Every man should have several guns. And several dogs, because a man with a cat is a woman. Kurt Schlichter | |||
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| Nullus Anxietas |
That's a good one, all right. I have one that's almost exactly like it. It was occurring just as I was retiring. Much the same as your's: Simultaneous software, hardware, and operations conversion of a Manufacturing Resource Planning system that was nearly EOL'd and had been heavily customized to the way the company preferred to do business, by a new Enterprise Resource Planning system for which no proper needs analysis had been performed. When they told me what they planned to do I told my boss I'd have no part of it and good luck. And I did indeed manage to mostly dodge any involvement in it whatsoever, other than assisting with data mining and conversion, until the day I retired. I actually retired something of a "hero" wrt to that project, because I managed to pull usable data out of that old system, such that it "made sense" to the new system, that nobody had thought would be possible  "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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| Unapologetic Old School Curmudgeon  |
I hate when the customer CEO gives your VP the RFQ, but with inadequate SOW so your PM cant issue a PO to the SME to start the WBS and they cant establish a KPI or RACI. What a bunch of BS Don't weep for the stupid, or you will be crying all day | |||
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SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge Program Managers - You'll Love this Head Banging "Are you kidding me?" Situation...
Main Page The Lounge Program Managers - You'll Love this Head Banging "Are you kidding me?" Situation...© SIGforum 2024