Category: Delivery

Walking out of a meeting with a client…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Learning, Project Management

‘Meetings, meetings, meetings!’, a delivery leader exclaimed irritably after a session with a client who had given them the verbal hair-dryer treatment about an imminent milestone and its associated payment. ‘They don’t want to pay, even though we’ll have met the milestone in full’, the leader grumbled before berating themselves for not having walked out of the meeting. The Badger smiled. Memories of his own difficult meetings with clients came flooding back.

Notwithstanding the comprehensive training in meetings and negotiations that companies provide, it’s real experience in difficult client meetings that hones your  approach to getting the right outcome. The Badger’s approach developed over the years to have essentially three things at its core. The first was that the client is not always right, and that being in command of irrefutable facts, and using them calmly, consistently, and assertively rather than petulantly and confrontationally, is crucial to getting the desired outcome. The second was mental resilience, to have as much background to the client’s position as possible, and to decide tactics that are unwaveringly focused on the desired outcome, before the start of the meeting. The third was to always have a walking out option in the kitbag as a weapon of last resort, but not for use to assuage personal ego or frustration.

Had the Badger ever walked out of a client meeting, the delivery leader asked? Yes, but rarely. One occasion was some months after a system with a fractious delivery history had become operational with a client’s end-users. The meeting was to a) formalise that the delivery contract’s deliverables had all been delivered, and b) that the client would make the final payment due and close the contract. It should have been a formality, because the client’s staff had already confirmed everything had been delivered to contract and to their satisfaction. Item (a) was indeed confirmed at the meeting, but the client refused, without giving any reason, to pay the outstanding money.

During a break, the Badger and his team agreed we were wasting our time because the client had no intention of paying. After the break, the Badger asked the client to confirm that although no contractual deliverables remained, they would not pay the money due. They confirmed this, and the Badger got up and left followed by his team. The shock on the client’s team faces was palpable. It was not something they’d anticipated!  Payment was received three days later after the Badger’s CEO phoned the chairman of the client’s Board of Directors to complain and threaten litigation if users continued to use the system.  

With a twinkle in their eye, the delivery leader looked at the Badger, grinned broadly, and said ‘I was wise not to have walked out. If I had, the client might have thought I was a petulant, over-sensitive, snowflake with no backbone’.  The Badger laughed aloud…

Advertisement

‘Why haven’t we learned lessons from other problematic projects?’

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Information Technology, Learning, Processes and Practices, Project Management

Early in the Badger’s career, when he was part of a team sorting out a large software and systems project with serious problems, the CEO of the time angrily asked the line manager responsible for the project ‘Why has this happened? Why haven’t we learned the lessons from other problematic projects?’. The line manager’s answers were ill-considered waffle and only served to ratchet up the pressure from, and antagonise, their boss.  

At that time, projects involving anything IT related were notorious for serious timescale and cost overruns. IT was a young, rapidly growing industry, and software development was seen as black magic performed by very clever people. Disciplined software engineering processes were rudimentary, and most programmers were graduates from enormously diverse STEM-subject, rather than computing, backgrounds. The Badger’s first software team leader, for example, had a Civil Engineering degree and a master’s degree in Water (sewage) Treatment!

In the decades since,  IT companies have improved and evolved their management and  engineering policies and processes – their ‘company manuals’ – because it was necessary to stay in business. Today, a continuous improvement ethos that feeds lessons learned into policies, processes, and practices is a norm, and software and systems engineering is more standardised and rigorous. Companies still have troublesome projects, but there are fewer of them, and they are detected earlier and addressed faster.

And so, the Badger’s interest was piqued recently when he heard a CEO calmly ask a line manager the same questions as above. The line manager answered with three points that struck a chord with the Badger’s own experience. The first was that in recent years annual staff turnover of between 12 to 15% had diluted the continuity of knowledge because nearly half the workforce had changed. The second was that clients want the capabilities of evolving innovative technology much faster and cheaper, which means that projects can encounter more skill and experience issues than envisaged at contract signature. The third was that feeding lessons learned into management and engineering policies, processes, and practices and embedding awareness in the workforce needed a greater company willingness for those who had lived the project experience to spend more time as ‘overheads’ rather than revenue earners.

The CEO calmly agreed, and then said something which also aligned with the Badger’s experience, namely ‘Our company’s policies, processes, and practices will never be perfect. If we want fewer project difficulties, then we must get project people to just talk more to each other and willingly share their experience’.  And there you have it. The fastest way to learn lessons is for people to just talk to each other. Projects depend on people, and people have different personalities, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses, and never do quite what you expect! That’s why troublesome projects will never be eradicated completely and continuous improvement is always a challenge.  

Upset your client and spoil your career…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, IT Project Management, Project Management

What’s the saddest thing you’ve see happen o someone you’ve been working with? Bereavement is excluded; the answer must be something the person has inflicted on themselves. A youngster, chatting to the Badger socially, asked this very question the other day. Surprised, the Badger played for time and asked what had prompted the question. They shrugged their shoulders, and simply said that a couple of their project team lacked common sense and sadly seemed oblivious that this was spoiling their career prospects. The conversation was interrupted by someone else, and so the Badger didn’t get to answer their question, but if he had, it would have been along the following lines.

One instance of the saddest thing someone inflicted on themselves comes to mind because it illustrates what can happen when a personality with embedded behaviours gained at one company, proves to be mismatched at another company in a different sector.  The circumstances were as follows. A senior delivery leader was recruited by the Badger’s IT sector employer from a large international defence company to run a major, fixed-price, high-profile IT contract of strategic importance to the client. The printed contract documentation filled numerous lever arch files and the person recruited, who joined the company before contract signature to lead mobilisation and then delivery, insisted on having an A5-size printed copy for their briefcase.  

Grumblings soon emerged as delivery got underway and the individual became the focal point with the client. Tensions within the individual’s team, due to their self-important, patronising, ‘I know best’ personality and an approach to delivery ingrained at their previous employer, also quickly became evident. The team started disengaging from their leader because of their arrogance, failure to listen, and inept people skills. Ever louder grumblings from the client came because the individual reached into their briefcase at the start of every client meeting, theatrically put the A5 copy of the contract on the table, and then referenced or checked it as part of every conversation. Client requests, and those from company executives when the client escalated, not to do this were ignored. A contract is never an irrelevant document, of course, but there’s a time and place for waving it about and it’s not in every meeting! Eventually the client refused to have any dealing with the individual.

Seeing the individual damage their career by failing to recognise that their modus operandi was upsetting the client and damaging the effectiveness of their own team was very sad. They were moved, never ran a delivery again, and never accepted that the spoiling of their career was self-inflicted.  There are always exceptions, of course, but upsetting your client and your team by letting arrogance and self-importance dominate your modus operandi, is almost certainly going to spoil your career. Keep this in mind if you don’t want to spoil your career and be someone else’s saddest thing anecdote…

Wisdom for a first-time Project Manager…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Project Management

A book called ‘There’s a New Sheriff in Town: The Project Manager’s proven guide to successfully taking over ongoing projects and getting the work done’ was published recently, and the Badger, whose career centred on the many aspects of delivery in the IT business, is currently reading it. The book’s lengthy title, as it happens, also reminds the Badger of his very first assignment as a project manager, many, many years ago!

After working as an analyst-programmer and design authority on a number of sizeable software development projects, the Badger’s line manager took him to one side to say that his next assignment was to take over as project manager on a software and systems development project that was completely off the rails. The young Badger had no project management experience and expressed his surprise!  The line manager cited two reasons for why they had no doubt that the Badger was the right person for the job. The first was that the Badger’s character, experience, and latent capabilities were highly suited to sorting out the poor engineering and technical matters at the heart of the project’s problems, and the second was that most aspects of project management were always best learned on the job! Being thrown in at the deep end, they added, was nothing to be fear.  

Somewhat daunted, the Badger chatted to an experienced and consistently successful manager of difficult software intensive projects who gave three pieces of advice.  The first was ‘ You will fail if you fall into the trap of believing project management is about administering the processes in a project management handbook. It’s really about leadership, and showing the character, resilience, vision, drive, and professionalism to get the job done’. The second was ‘Most project management books are not written by people with a software or IT, so most are a distraction and won’t help get the job done or make you real project manager’. Things have moved on significantly since the time when there was a paucity of books about managing projects in the IT world, but the inherent not being overly distracted reading books still has some validity. The third point was ‘If you are replacing a current project manager who has lost the confidence of line management then remember that if you do what they did, you’ll get what they got!’  This was their way of saying be different, be focused, and be aware that you can be replaced too!

So, if you find yourself being appointed as the new sheriff in town on an ailing IT project, and it’s your first role as a project manager, don’t be fazed. Be a leader not just an administrator of process, be motivated to listen and learn, be focused, and know that these days there are books like the one above that can help by providing many nuggets of wisdom gleaned from experience…  

Think differently about your performance appraisal with your boss…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Education, Human Resources, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Learning

The reactions of people who’ve just had a performance appraisal with their boss varies enormously and also highlights how different we are as individuals. Personal reactions, of course, cover a wide spectrum. The Badger’s experience, however, is that while a person’s demeanour and body language says a lot about their reaction, most people share little more than the odd comment about their appraisal with others. There are always, of course, people who think they’ve been treated poorly and say so to anyone who will listen. In the Badger’s experience, such individuals tend to be self-centred, averagely talented, poor listeners, and they normally have egotistic or narcistic personalities.  These individuals, and those at the other end of the spectrum who are just downright lazy, unproductive, and permanently negative,  tend to share their displeasure widely and keep HR functions busy with claims of unfair treatment.

A youngster in their first job since leaving University 15 months ago whined to the Badger this week that their appraisal had been a shock and unfair. The youngster, hungry for rapid career and salary progression, unfortunately failed to recognise that they haven’t adjusted to working life as well as their peers. The Badger explained this, and in the course of doing so remembered some wisdom from a training course he attended many years ago. On that course, a behaviour expert, building on the sport coaching work of Tim Gallway, emphasised that we should think about individual performance using the simple equation ‘Performance = Talent – Interferences’. If someone has 100% Talent, then their Performance is never 100% because there are always Interferences from personal and/or organisational factors. Personal interferences come, for example, from lifestyle, health, family and/or caring responsibilities. Organisational interferences come, for example, from skill set mismatches with work role, adequacy of role definition, relationships with leaders and work colleagues, organisational bureaucracy, and factors like organisational dynamism and workforce stagnation if business growth is poor.

The behaviour expert’s key message was that everyone has Interferences, so no one can ever perform at 100%! Interestingly, they used the same equation to describe the performance of a company. In this case, Talent represents a company’s portfolio of  products and services, and Interferences are largely the policies, processes, and  controls that influence the delivery of the portfolio to clients. Bigger companies tend to have more Interferences than smaller ones, and no company ever performs at 100%, although clever accounting and expectation management often masks this!

So, think about your performance appraisal in the terms above. Your Talent is constant, so your Performance dips when Interferences rise. Eventually Interferences will reach a level that makes you feel like doing something different with your life. It’s very empowering when this happens, because it definitively changes the way you approach your appraisal with your boss.  

Troublesome projects…and Bertrand Russell

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Information Technology, Project Management

Line managers always get pressure from senior executives to take swift action when a project they’re responsible for experiences serious difficulty. Line managers, especially inexperienced ones, often assuage this pressure by quickly changing the Project Manager. This often-knee-jerk response doesn’t always fix the problem because although the new appointee may be conveniently available, they may not have the breadth of personal, commercial, delivery and technical characteristics needed, or be properly empowered. One of the Badger’s experiences of being appointed as ‘the new project manager’ by a panicking line manager proved not only to be reminder of the strength and diversity of character needed to turnaround a troubled project, but also a memorable introduction to Bertrand Russell.

The project in question was not meeting its contract with an international prime contractor who was delivering a huge strategic programme for their end customer. The Badger’s remit from the line manager was ‘fix everything’ because the finances are perilous, and litigation is looming. Senior executives from all the organisations involved had met in a last ditch bid to avoid an expensive, embarrassing, catastrophe for all concerned. They had agreed to leadership changes and so the Badger found himself appointed at the same time as a new opposite number in the prime contractor.

Our first engagement shortly after being appointed was at a meeting involving both of our respective incumbent team leads, ostensibly as an opportunity for them to air their thoughts and feelings about the contract’s difficulties. The two teams were polarised, divergent, defensive, inconsistent, and in blame mode from the outset! After a particularly fractious exchange, the Badger’s new prime opposite number called a halt for a coffee break and took the Badger to one side. The badger was asked if he was familiar with Bertrand Russell and two of his famous quotes, namely:   

  • The fundamental cause of trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
  • Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

The Badger said no. His counterpart then used these quotes to make the point that if we could both see the problems and resolutions but were full of doubt and worry about being different to our incumbent teams, then nothing would change, and litigation beckoned. We agreed that we were not stupid, not members of the herd, only focused on finding solutions, unmotivated by personal kudos, and that we expected to take  unpopular decisions. Following this conversation, we both did difficult things with our teams and the turnaround started.

So, remember this. To fix a troublesome project needs a focused and resilient character, intelligence and a breadth of skills, and some awareness of Bertrand Russell’s wisdom!Anyone full of self-doubt or worried about being an outsider is unlikely to succeed.

Setting the bar too high…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Education, Information Technology, Leadership, Learning, Project Management

In his school days, the Badger was in the school field athletics team because he was good at javelin, long jump, and – rather surprisingly for someone of average height – the high jump. It was, according to the team coach, the Badger’s natural technique rather than any specific physicality that underpinned why he was good at these events. The coach, a resolute athlete who demanded the same dedication from others, had two favourite phrases to encourage team members to train hard and do better. The first was ‘technique is the difference between reliable success and reliable failure’. The second, used especially for the high jumpers, was ‘you don’t jump high unless you set the bar high’. Little did the schoolboy Badger know that he would regularly hear leaders and managers utter this one throughout his working life!

The Badger’s often heard executives say ‘you don’t jump high unless you set the bar high’ when setting an expected, imperative outcome that is challenging, and when trying to persuade their audience that the challenge is tough, but the outcome is within reach. These last few words, however, are crucial because if an audience don’t sense that the outcome is within reach then they will nod sagely, consider argument futile, and only work half-heartedly towards the objective. If that happens then the road ahead will almost certainly be full of disappointment, blame, low morale, problems, and financial under-performance.

For many leaders and senior staff in sizeable organisations, attending an annual gathering at which executives set out the key priorities and targets for the coming year is routine. The Badger’s attended many such events over the years, and whilst fundamentally there’s nothing wrong in using ‘you don’t jump high unless you set the bar high’ to set ambitious targets, two observations crystallise from the experience. The first is that if the audience sense the challenging target is reachable then they will embrace it, fully align their support and activities, and executives will hold onto their jobs. The second is that if the audience feels the bar has been set so high that you need binoculars to see it, then they will pay lip-service to the challenge, gossip about the credibility of executives, worry about the enterprise’s viability, and speculate about whose heads will roll when outcomes are not met.

The point is simply this. If you are the leader in a company, project, programme, or service, then don’t lose touch with reality or your people. If  you set the bar way too high, then you will have an unhappy workforce, people will leave, output and quality will decline, financial forecasts will not be met, and your credibility as a leader will be damaged. The best leaders stay grounded in reality, make good judgements that balance competing soft and hard priorities, set the bar within reach, and communicate honestly and inspiringly. Those that don’t ultimately suffer the consequences.

The power of techies talking to clients…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Information Technology, Learning

Those who work in the technical, development, and delivery aspects of the IT industry are highly skilled, productive people often with a STEM-subject background. While some have natural ‘sales’ personalities and attributes, most prefer to focus on their project tasks rather than spend a lot of time interacting with clients. When they do, however, interact with clients, being on the alert for potential new business leads is often not high in their consciousness during their interaction. The Badger fitted this bill  early in his IT career, until a senior client visited the large software and systems integration project he was working.

The Badger’s company bosses arranged for the client and their entourage to spend a whole day with the project. The Badger grumbled because his teams were under schedule pressure but the grumbling, of course, fell on deaf ears and the visit went ahead with the client’s entourage meeting the software, systems, and test teams throughout the day. The visit ended with a client feedback session involving the Badger’s bosses and others from within the project. The senior client was rewardingly positive and asked the Badger’s bosses the following:    

‘Your techies and delivery people are impressive and  ooze knowledge, skill, and commitment. Talking to them has emphasised that your company not only has strength in depth but was also the right choice for this project. However, why do we only see people with account, business development, or sales titles when we want to discuss some of our wider business pains? If we saw and more routinely interacted with those from your engine room, then you would probably win more work from us’.

This opened the Badger’s eyes to the latent power of techies talking to clients and the under-use of the company’s engine-room community in identifying potential leads for new business. The number of staff in this community was much greater than those in formal sales, business development, and account management roles, and so it seemed obvious that more engagement between client and company technical and delivery staff  would benefit relationships and growth for the company. It also struck the Badger that talking to clients was good for the personal and career development of even the most introvert techie. The client’s words also highlighted that engine-room staff are not only the cornerstone of a company’s reputation, but also a powerful force that can influence a company’s ability to generate new business opportunities.

Ever since this feedback session the Badger has encouraged techies to recognise the power of talking with clients and to be attuned to identifying potential leads for additional business. Today wise companies encourage this dynamic routinely, because if they don’t then their competitors will be reaping the benefit of stronger relationships and better business growth.

Return to Space…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Space, Technology

Idling on the sofa at home after a meeting, the Badger wanted to do nothing more energetic than watching a Netflix film. Whatever he watched, the Badger knew it would probably have something in common with the meeting he attended, namely that it would be much longer than it needed to be! With low expectations that it would keep his attention for the duration, the Badger  selected the documentary film ‘Return to Space’ about SpaceX’s activities to deliver astronauts from American soil to the International Space Station (ISS).  The film proved more engaging than expected. Why? Not because it features Elon Musk, but because the Badger, as an IT professional and delivery leader with strong roots in science and engineering, could relate from his own career experiences to the SpaceX team’s dedication and hard work, and their relief and exhilaration when their goals were met.

After the documentary ended, the Badger’s lasting impressions centred on four things. The first was that this endeavour would not have been possible without a multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. This should inspire youngsters to study STEM subjects and develop their careers accordingly. The second was that the whole leadership and management were disciplined and entirely focused on important milestones, solving problems, and the ultimate goal. No team will deliver without focused, disciplined, objective, and committed leadership and management. The third was the excellent teamwork, testing, risk mitigation, and fact-based rigour in decision making on display. Those involved were motivated, clear on their roles and responsibilities, and stood by the decisions and judgement calls made. The fourth thing was that Information Technology and integrated computer systems were at the heart of absolutely everything.

Anyone who has worked on major programmes and been there when the ultimate goal is achieved can relate to the palpable relief, job satisfaction, and euphoric pride shown by everyone on the SpaceX team when they delivered the two astronauts to the ISS and returned them safely to Earth. There’s nothing like the feeling of personal and professional satisfaction and elation that every team member, not just those in leadership positions, feels when a programme or project delivers. It’s a great feeling!

As he rose from the sofa, the Badger’s smartphone announced the arrival of an email  from British Gas. They had emailed the previous day saying that the Badger’s energy account had been migrated to a new system. The new email simply notified that an  energy statement was available online. With a sense of foreboding, the Badger logged into his energy account and found all was not well. SpaceX and British Gas may not be in comparable industries, but in ‘Return to Space’ the former cared that they got things right and delivered progress. Sadly, the opposite seems true for British Gas. Perhaps they need a dose of Elon Musk…

Describe the dynamics of today’s digital world in one word…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Change, Climate & Environment, Delivery, Education, IT Project Management, Life, Online Services, Press & Media, Privacy and Surveillance, Project Management, social media, Technology

Would you find it easy or hard to describe the dynamics of our modern digital world in one word? Would one word immediately come to mind, or would you need time to think before deciding? Rather than decide yourself, would you prefer to converge on a word via a group discussion? What would your word be? An ex senior civil servant, in their eighties with a razor-sharp mind, asked these questions in a recent conversation. The Badger took the easy option, answered ‘don’t know’, and we moved on to other things. The questions, however, have bugged the Badger ever since, and so as Storm Eunice buffeted the windows, he settled in his study listening to a playlist of favourite music to decide his answers.

The answer for the first question was ‘it’s hard’. In fact, it took much longer than expected to decide on one word to answer the last question. The answers to the second and third questions came quick and were straightforward. They were, respectively, time to think rather than spontaneity, and deciding for himself rather than potentially succumbing to  ‘groupthink’. The word the Badger ultimately converged on as the answer to the last question was ‘Creep’.

The word has enormous breadth. In materials technology, ‘creep’ is the movement and permanent deformation of a solid under persistent load ultimately leading to failure. Glaciers and lead on church roofs are simple illustrations of the phenomenon. ‘Scope creep’, when requirements drift away from agreed baselines due to client pressure and poor controls, is well-known to those running businesses, projects, programmes, or service delivery. This kind of ‘creep’ often leads to financial problems, commercial disputes, and serious delays. And then, of course, ‘creep’ is sometimes used to describe people who are unpleasant, untrustworthy, insincere, or are just plain odd in their habits, interests, and behaviours.

‘Creep’ seems a more realistic descriptor for the dynamics of our modern digital world than the word ‘change’. For example, our insatiable demand for resources and fossil fuels is producing creep deformation of aspects of our planet to the point of crisis and questions about our sustainability on it. Additionally, digital innovation and fast technological advancement represents a persistent stress on businesses, governments, and the public producing the erosive creep of personal privacy to the point where societal rupture is a risk. Similarly, the need for social media platforms to keep people engaged and active is causing the creep of fact, news, and sensible debate into just disinformation, misinformation, abuse, and entertainment fuelling growing distrust and antipathy. ‘Creep’, of course, can still be used to describe some people, and it seems particularly apt today for politicians and so-called elites!

Oh, and ‘Creep’, by the way, is a great song by Radiohead! What would your one word to describe the dynamics of today’s world be?