Category: IT Project Management

‘Do what’s necessary to fix this fast’ – Would you be up for the challenge?

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

Here’s a situation. A contractor has a large fixed-price contract to develop a major system (hardware and software) that’s crucial to the client’s business. The project is in serious difficulty. Contracted deliverables to date have been of poor quality and late. Lots of software has been developed but there are severe test and integration problems. Hardware from a subcontractor is also late, exacerbating the difficulties. The client has constructed a new building which has been sitting idle for six months waiting for the new system to be installed. They are threatening punitive litigation. The project is causing the contractor significant, company-level, financial damage and resolving the situation has become a business-critical issue. Client and contractor executives have agreed that the contractor has one last chance to deliver the system and avoid litigation, ostensibly because unrelated matters within the client’s wider enterprise have delayed for some months when the building must become operational.

If you, an employee of the contractor not associated with the project, were asked to ‘Do what’s necessary to fix this fast’, what would your reaction be? The Badger once pitched this scenario and question to a group of IT sector project managers. Their responses were interesting. Most of those with cost-plus project management experience said they wouldn’t take on the challenge because being associated with a problem project might damage their career prospects. Others said they’d accept the challenge but only if it were accepted that their need to review the project, establish committees, and rebuild stakeholder management meant it was unlikely the project could be ‘fixed fast’.

Only one person, someone who had run a couple of modest fixed-price contracts, said unequivocally that they’d take the challenge. When the Badger asked them why, their response was – ‘If you’ve successfully run software and hardware intensive fixed price projects then you’ve learned that you’re a highly focused, demanding, disciplined and decisive individual with limited patience. You’ve learned that you need to be respected by your team and your client but not necessarily liked. You’ve learned the importance of dynamism, belief, team spirit, and having a positive attitude, and the importance of looking forward and taking speedy action to head off emerging threats to success. You’ve also learned that decisions must be good ones but not necessarily popular, and that ‘No’ is an immensely powerful word. Having learned all this, taking on the turnaround of a seriously troubled project threatening the company seems like a great personal opportunity rather than a foolhardy thing to do’.

The Badger smiled. Here was a kindred spirit! Fixing troublesome projects is always a challenge and a great opportunity to expand one’s capabilities. The contrast in attitude between those with cost-plus and fixed-price contract PM backgrounds was stark. If you were asked to ‘Do what’s necessary to fix this fast’ today, would you be up for the challenge?

Expect up to 20% of people on your project to be ‘problematic’…

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

After completing a couple of IT project leader roles early in his career, the Badger’s employer sent him on the company’s 3-day residential Project Management training course. In those days, attendance on the course was seen as a stepping stone to career advancement within the company. The Badger, however, wasn’t convinced about Project Management as a career path. He’d also heard that the course focused mainly on ‘processes’ rather than leadership. His boss, however, was adamant that the Badger attend, and so reluctantly he complied and joined ten others drawn from across the company in a small hotel in the Chilterns. The course’s focus was, indeed, mainly on Project Management processes, but it was quickly apparent that its real value was in providing an environment for attendees to share their experiences and learn from each other.

At the end of one afternoon, a guest speaker – the company’s most senior and experienced Project Manager (PM) – gave a formal talk and then took questions. They stayed for an evening meal with the attendees and subsequently adjourned to the bar to continue conversations. They were impressive, relaxed, and keen to pass on their knowledge. They communicated many insightful nuggets gleaned from their experience, and the Badger’s found many of them to have been valuable reference points throughout every facet of his working life. Process is, of course, important in delivering projects of any kind, but the most significant  and memorable learning points from this particular course were not from formal sessions, but from this senior PM’s experience and the experiences of the other delivery people attending.

One insightful nugget from the senior PM was: ‘Expect up to 20% of those on your project to struggle, underperform, or have questionable capability and character. Act to reduce that percentage but recognise it will never be zero.’ From the Badger’s experience since,  IT projects operating well will always have ~10% of the project complement that fall into the senior PM’s categories. The reasons why range widely from personal crises, and character, personality, and behavioural flaws, through to poor skills, inadequate management, training, or simply mismatched skills for the specific role. These people can drain management time and impact project morale and so it’s essential to strive to keep this component of a project’s complement at a sensible level.

The senior PM’s insightful nugget embodies an underlying truth, namely that in any group of people there’s always a portion who are ‘problematic.’ This is as true for a project group as it is for a group of business managers, a group of politicians, and even a group of world leaders! The next time you observe,  engage with, or simply watch media content of a group of people, have some fun deciding what percentage are in  the ‘problematic’ category. It can be fun and therapeutic…but be warned, it can also be depressing if it’s a group of politicians…

Late payments to subcontractors and suppliers…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Digital Transformation, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership, Processes and Practices, Project Management, Supply Chain, Technology

Enterprises often hold an annual leadership conference to review the highs, lows, and lessons from the year, and to align their leaders with the business objectives for the year ahead. The Badger first attended such a conference decades ago when all attendees were gathered in the same place for an intense couple of days of formality and informal networking with peers. Enterprises today are increasingly sensitive about the logistical costs and environmental issues associated with gathering people in one place. Many such leadership conferences have thus become more hybrid in nature with smaller, distributed gatherings connected using online video streaming services. This very modern, tech-based approach has many benefits in terms of cost and convenience.

Although the Badger’s first annual leadership conference was a long time ago, he still remembers vividly a particular point made by the company CEO during a presentation lamenting the difficulties of being an IT subcontractor delivering  projects into client’s major programmes. The point was ‘Being a subcontractor is great, but being the prime contractor controlling when a subcontractor gets paid is much, much, much better!’  For some of its projects, the company had been struggling to get prime contractors to pay valid invoices for achieved milestones within contracted terms. The prime contractors had played all kinds of games to pay their subcontractors and suppliers when it suited them, rather than to what was written in their agreed contracted terms. They knew that apart from chasing and whining, subcontractors and suppliers were unlikely to take more forthright action because they wanted to avoid lasting damage to the client relationship in case it excluded them from potential future work opportunities.

Since then, UK legislation in 1998  has made provision for interest on late payment under commercial contracts. However, recent information suggests that only 1 in 10 subcontractors/suppliers enforce this right by actively charging interest, claiming compensation, or seeking debt recovery. This suggests that some level of reluctance remains due to concern about damaging customer relations,  especially for smaller businesses who are, after all, the majority of the UK economy and often heavily dependent on a small number of clients. It may be decades later, but the CEO’s point noted above remains relevant.

Cash flow difficulties can cause liquidity crises and even collapse for any size of enterprise, and so when the Badger heard that the UK government is introducing tougher late payment legislation his first thought was not alleluia, but why hasn’t AI and automation revolutionised payment processing in enterprises to ensure that payments  against valid invoices are always fully paid within contracted terms?  After all, digital technology has been transforming everything for years, and so perhaps this new legislation will add momentum to making a payment revolution happen faster. Let’s hope so. By the way, if you’re interested, you can check how well an enterprise does in paying within terms using the government tool here. 

Uncomfortable meetings…

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

When a signed contract is in its delivery phase there are normally regular progress meetings between the two parties involved. There are often ups and downs during delivery, but for most IT sector contracts these bumps in the road are normally ironed out through these meetings and associated follow-ups. Some contracts, however, experience major problems that cause strained relationships and lead to confrontational interactions. Meetings between client and contractor can then become quarrelsome, uncomfortable, and unproductive. When this happens, no matter what training you’ve had, it requires iron personal discipline, resilience, and control over one’s emotions to avoid wasting energy by getting angry. That energy is better channelled to turn the tables in your favour.

The Badger has experienced many uncomfortable meetings, but two in particular stand out as memorable because they were challenging from both a human dynamics, and a contractual, perspective. The first related to an IT contract for a system to computerise a manufacturing process in a new facility being constructed by a major US prime contractor. There were delays in constructing the facility, and the prime contractor blamed these on the IT contractor. In one important meeting, the prime contractor’s lead resorted to shouting, thumping the table, and angrily questioning the Badger and his team’s competence. The second related to a contract delivering business process operations (BPO) for a public body. There were service difficulties because the client and contractor teams had different understandings of their contractual obligations. The client’s lead convened a meeting and vociferously blamed the contractor’s team for all the difficulties and for being unprofessional. The lead was in aggressive, transmit-only, finger-pointing, bullying, and raised-voice mode, and they would not allow others to speak.

These were uncomfortable, tricky meetings. In the face of vitriolic verbal onslaughts, they were handled by not arguing, staying calm, listening carefully, maintaining civility and professionalism, and then acting decisively once the meetings had ended! The decisive actions, which the Badger isn’t expanding on here, forced both clients to face up to their own contractual obligations and behaviour and to take steps to repair relationships. In both cases, when things had settled down, the clients admitted not only that the contractor could ‘look after itself’ commercially, but also admiration and respect for the composure, resilience, discipline and professionalism they’d seen from the contractor’s staff.

The Badger mentioned the above meeting dynamics to a young IT project manager recently. They were horrified and commented that they wouldn’t cope with such unacceptable shouty meeting dynamics today. The Badger smiled and suggested that  since humans are all different, then exposure to volatile characters and shouty, bullying meetings can be useful for personal development. With a look of disbelief on their face, the youngster called the Badger a dinosaur. The Badger laughed. That’s nowhere near some of the things he’s been called in the past!

Three pillars for success – a rule-of-thumb…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, International Relations, IT Project Management, Leadership, Project Management, Tariffs, Transformation

If you run a company, business unit, programme, project, or service, then you want it to be successful, don’t you? Of course you do. Many sources can guide you on what to do to ensure success, but in simple terms there are, in the Badger’s experience, essentially three pillars to get right. These are Objectives (clarity on what you’re setting out to achieve), Approach (the approach you take to communicate and align others with your objectives), and Plan (the schedule to deliver your expected beneficial outcomes). Having encountered many IT business and delivery successes and failures over the years, the Badger has a simple rule-of-thumb that if all three pillars are set well, then success will follow. If, however, one or more pillar is dysfunctional then turmoil and disappointment is inevitable.

Applying his rule-of-thumb to the current tariff war initiated by the US suggests that the success of this endeavour is far from certain. Are the US administration’s objectives clear, well-founded, and well-articulated? Is an approach based on bullying, bluster, and distorted information, the right one? Is there a thought-through plan that has factored in the risks? You’ll have your own view on the answers. The Badger, however, senses the current ‘gunslinger’ approach points more towards ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’ answers. When the US claims that all countries (allies and foes) have ‘raped, pillaged, and plundered’ the US economy when its giant tech companies have ‘raped, pillaged, and plundered’ everyone’s data globally then, whatever the tariff war outcome, it’s clear that things will never be the same again.

This democratically elected US administration took office just a few months ago and has bullied allies and foes alike ever since. Public pronouncements have been bellicose and relationships with nations around the world have undoubtedly been shaken by the US’s brutal, opening tariff war salvo. Erstwhile friends and foes alike are in the throes of protecting their national interests knowing that the geopolitical and trading landscape  is changing significantly. Capitulation to US bullying tactics seems unlikely, especially when other countries know that the US public will likely to feel great, self-inflicted, pain.

The Badger’s feels a) that at least two pillars of the US administration’s tariff endeavour are wobbly, b) that this US administration will declare success regardless of the eventual outcome, and c) that the US is already a loser. Why the latter? Well, the US may be the world’s biggest economy, but respect for the country has been damaged, and once lost that respect is difficult to rebuild. If you ignore the inevitable spin and bluster, announcements in the last 24-hours suggest some US back-pedalling in the light of market chaos and growing global economic disquiet. History shows that world superpowers rise and fall, and it feels like the US star is waning and China’s is rising. The most satisfying thing for the Badger, however, is that his pillars rule-of-thumb still seems to work pretty well!

When there’s a new sheriff in town…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Change, Human Resources, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Training

‘The lunatics have taken over the asylum’. No, that’s not a jab at the world’s leaders, often hyper-wealthy and drunk on power and their own egos, it’s what a young Badger thought many years ago when his employer appointed a new Chief Executive from outside the company. Soon after their arrival, the new CEO appointed more outsiders to  key leadership roles. Unsurprisingly, most of them had worked for the CEO before. The workforce quickly grasped that the ‘new sheriff in town’ and their ‘deputies’ were intent on rapidly and ruthlessly making their mark.

At the time, the Badger was leading his very first systems/software development project. The rationale for the rapid changes made by the new CEO seemed unfathomable to someone who was completely focused on delivering his project. Looking back decades later, having accumulated wide-ranging business and delivery experience, it’s clear the company needed change to sharpen its commercial and financial focus. Indeed, the CEO changed it for the better in these respects, but to the detriment of a great embedded workforce culture that was exceptionally team oriented. Wariness and distrust of the new sheriff and their deputies spread through the company, especially when the scale of the salaries, bonuses, and share options being paid to the new leadership became public knowledge.

The Badger’s respected and long-standing line manager at the time supported the need for change. They were, however, vocal in their dissent about the new CEO’s approach and the chaos it caused. They confided to a number of direct reports, including the Badger, that they expected the new sheriff,  who was ruthlessly intolerant of anyone with the temerity to challenge the changes being promulgated, to exit them from the company. They were right. Within a few months, they left the company having signed a compromise agreement. On their last day at work, they gave the Badger two pieces of advice, namely, ‘When you deal with any CEO or senior executive consider them to be psychopaths until you’re sure they’re not’, and ‘Remember that any CEO or senior executive will be your friend, until it suits them not to be’. These struck a truthful chord which caused the young Badger to learn about the actual characteristics of a psychopath! (In simple terms these are summarized here, for example). Furthermore, these words of wisdom triggered the Badger to learn more about human behaviour and to use that learning to good effect throughout the rest of his own delivery and leadership career.

And that’s the key message from this item. If you have an opportunity to learn about the rudiments of human psychology, then take it and use what you learn when interacting with, and observing, others. His line-manager’s advice stood the Badger in good stead over the years. Keep it in mind, especially when there’s a ‘new sheriff’ with a new set of ‘deputies’ in town intent on change…

Looking forward…

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

Do you know exactly what you were doing at a specific time on Christmas Eve 45 years ago? Regardless of your age, it’s unlikely that you do! But the Badger does. He and his brothers were helping their father complete deliveries so that he could get home at a reasonable time on Christmas Eve. We’d started at 3am, and on completing the last delivery in the middle of the afternoon we were exhausted! The Badger remembers the time, location, the weather, and what we were wearing for this last delivery because one of his brothers had a 35mm camera with him and asked a passerby to take a photo of us in front of the delivery vehicle. That photo is date and time-stamped and is cherished by the Badger and his brothers.

What’s this got to do with ‘looking forward’? Well, the Badger’s father, who’s no longer with us, never made predictions about the year ahead. Being orphaned while an evacuee from London during the Second World War meant he dealt with life one day at a time. The unpredictability of the future world and his personal circumstances made not looking beyond tomorrow routine. He joined the Army as soon as he was old enough to, as he put it, ‘get an education, some semblance of  structure and family, and to establish good life skills and standards’. He thrived, served in Germany and the Middle East, and only left the service to marry.

The Badger and his brothers frequently heard mantras rooted in his Army days and childhood experiences while growing up. Advice like ‘there’s no such thing as can’t, try’, ‘if you’re knocked back, pull yourself together and start again’, and ‘learn from your mistakes but don’t dwell on the past, look forward to the future’ were heard frequently. His favourites were ‘remember, if it looks wrong, feels wrong, smells wrong, or sounds wrong, then it’s wrong’, ‘if something untoward happens don’t ignore it, deal with it’, and ‘look forward,  because you can’t change the past’. He often said he never made predictions about the future because he’d learned that the future never turned out the way anyone expected. The Badger has thus resisted the temptation to express any opinion about what 2025 will hold. While ‘look forward, because you can’t change the past’ continues to be a key ethos, his father was right – the future will almost certainly turn out to be different to what’s anticipated!

Thank you for reading the Badger’s Blog during 2024,  and best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. The Badger and his brothers will be toasting those of the pre-internet/tech generation who are no longer with us because they provided a drumbeat of sound advice and wisdom that’s become much diluted in today’s world. Merry Christmas!

Looking into the eyes of…a politician…

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

Most people in the UK workforce never get to look deeply into the eyes of a government minister. The Badger, however, first did just that some decades ago. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at the time visited one of the Badger’s employer’s offices for the type of ‘understanding what we do’ session that sometimes produce snippets on television news. At the time, the Badger was leading his company’s development of a key IT system at the heart of an important major programme within this minister’s remit. The day before the visit, the Badger’s boss told him to attend in case they wanted to discuss progress with the programme. The timing was inconvenient because the IT system was just a few days into a crucial testing activity, but attending was obviously the right thing to do.

The Badger duly arrived early the next morning at the office hosting the visit. The minister and their entourage arrived mid-morning, slightly later than expected, and the company CEO took them on a tour of the building and a number of demonstrations  prepared by local project teams. As they were shown around, the minister hardly smiled. They appeared distant and disinterested, and they spent more time talking to individuals in their entourage than those they were meeting. As the tour concluded, the CEO beckoned the Badger over and introduced him to the Secretary of State as the person delivering the key IT system at the heart of their programme. The Secretary of State shook the Badger’s hand, and while doing so, they locked eyes with the Badger’s and coldly asked ‘Will the system be delivered on time?’ without blinking. ‘Yes’, the Badger answered truthfully. They instantly turned away and asked the CEO about the arrangements for lunch! Immediately after this fleeting interaction, the Badger reflected on what he’d sensed from looking into the eyes of this politician.

Eyes are often called the ‘windows to a person’s soul’. If that’s the case, then this politician had no soul! There had been no flicker of interest, just a constancy of optical contact that was cold, uncomfortable, intimidating, and empty. While the Badger knew that politicians, like many business leaders, are often trained to maintain a certain demeanour, he concluded, right or wrong, that this individual’s personal attributes were unattractive and distrustful because they really didn’t have a soul!

Over the years since, the Badger’s often looked deeply into the eyes of politicians and business leaders. He’s come to realise that some do indeed have a soul, because their eyes broadcast confidence, competence, interest, inspiration, and trust. He’s observed that those with such attributes tend to have lengthy, successful, leadership careers, but those that don’t have tended to falter. So, never avoid direct eye contact with politicians and leaders because, as Al Pacino said in the movie Scarface, ‘The eyes, Chico, never lie’…

‘A crisis’ – the name for a group of dysfunctional experts.

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Consulting, Delivery, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Risk, Software, Systems Integration

Many years ago, the Badger took a late morning phone call from his boss asking him to pop into his office for a chat. A reason for the chat wasn’t mentioned, and so it was with a little trepidation that the Badger took the lift to the floor where his boss’s office was located. On approaching, the Badger saw his boss through the open door with elbows on the desk, head in hands, looking morose. Sensing the Badger’s arrival, his boss sat back, smiled, asked for the door to be closed and waved the Badger to a seat.

‘What’s the collective noun for a bunch of experts responsible for designing a huge software intensive system on a fixed-price contract?’ the Badger was asked in a relaxed manner. His boss didn’t wait for an answer. ‘A crisis’, they said with irritation and a flourish of colourful language that would cause apoplexy today. They explained that this answer derived from problems on a multi-tens of million pounds, fixed-price IT development project with a dysfunctional Design Authority (DA) team. This team, apparently, was full of acknowledged experts who seemed incapable of agreeing or deciding anything that was crucial to the progress of the overall project team’s software developers. At the start of the project line management had apparently insisted on staffing the DA team with experts who’d been between assignments and non-revenue earning for some time. The Badger’s boss admitted that, in hindsight, it hadn’t been wise to allow this to trump an individual’s technical and personal suitability for the project.

The Badger was then asked to sort this out and get the project back on track! He joined the project with an open mind and quickly assessed the situation. There were some leadership and management dynamics to adjust, but the DA team was indeed the key problem. Its members were all respected experts with specialist knowledge, but each was focused on expanding and protecting their expertise rather than the big picture and the project’s fixed price delivery. Teamwork, within the Design Authority itself and with the rest of the project, was poor. Experts can add enormous value to any team if used correctly, and so the Badger carefully considered how to rectify the situation. He repopulated the Design Authority with good people drawn from other parts of the project. The experts were released to their home units to be used a couple of days a month for consultancy if required by the new DA team. The experts and their line managers grumbled, but the project went forward to success.

The point of this tale? Simply to highlight that experts who keep their egos in check, never lose sight of the big picture, and have both specialist knowledge and the personal characteristics for teamwork, are valuable assets on tough delivery projects. Those that don’t have all of these attributes are more suited to short term specialist consultancy…

Gamesmanship and getting an invoice for a milestone paid…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Learning, Processes and Practices, Project Management

Important lessons arose early in the Badger’s career from experiencing the stress, effort, and time taken to get an invoice for a contractual milestone paid in full. The Badger learned about the importance of rigour when invoicing, and the need for detailed, verifiable, proof that all deliverables were delivered and contractually compliant. He also learned that clients may play games to delay payment if it suited them or provided useful leverage over their supplier.

This stemmed from particular dynamics encountered after completing software Acceptance Testing on a client’s site. It was an important contractual milestone with a sizeable payment attached. Its achievement also marked the point whereby a) control of the software transferred to the client to roll it out to their users, and b) the contract’s warranty and support phase started. Testing had been successful and on its completion the client agreed the milestone had been met, they took control of the software, and they agreed the start of warranty and support. Relationships were good and the invoice for the milestone payment was submitted. Then things became difficult!

The client claimed the invoice format was wrong, that all contractual deliverables hadn’t been provided, and that relevant documentation and certifications were not contractually compliant. They continually demanded more and more material to support the invoice. Relationships soured. The Badger’s line management, fearful of jeopardising future work for the client, simply said ‘do what they want and get the payment in pronto’. The Badger did as he was told! Eventually the client said everything was in order and that payment would arrive in line with contracted terms. The money, however, did not arrive!

It emerged that the client’s user rollout programme was suffering delays and so they had decided to withhold payment to ‘keep the supplier on the hook’ until it was back on track. A frustrated Badger wrote to the client pointing out that contractually there was no transfer of software to the client without payment for the milestone, which meant their user rollout activities constituted a breach of contract. It was not a popular move, but a contract is, after all, never an irrelevance! Payment happened a few days later.

The young Badger learned lessons about the real dynamics of business from this experience. Sometimes clients don’t pay because they choose to preserve their cash flow at the expense of suppliers, they don’t have the funds, or they really have lost an invoice. Sometimes, however, they simply engage in gamesmanship and choose not to pay. Today the proportion of invoices not paid on time by large UK businesses can be checked here, but business fundamentally revolves around people who have diverse characters and behaviours. Gamesmanship will thus always have a part in business dynamics, so it’s worth remembering that, as the Badger learned then and over the years since, suppliers need to be just as good at playing games as their clients…