Category: Project Management

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…

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‘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…  

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.

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?

Everyone is a salesperson…

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

One day, early in his IT project delivery career and during a meeting considering a meaty problem threatening his project’s progress, the Badger’s phone rang. The call went unanswered. The caller, the Badger’s line manager, left a voicemail asking for a call back. On returning the call, they explained that business with a new client was being developed, and that they wanted the Badger to visit the client with one of the sales team to help the client understand the company’s delivery credentials. The Badger grumbled, but the only acceptable response was to agree.

A couple of days later, the Badger and the salesperson met for the first time in a coffee shop an hour before the client meeting. The salesperson confirmed that the objective of the meeting was to build client confidence in the company’s technical and delivery capabilities, and, if asked, to provide an insight into delivering complex projects and programmes from personal experience. The client meeting proved positive and friendly, and afterwards the Badger returned to his project satisfied with how things had gone.

Two days later, the salesperson called to tell the Badger that he was sold to the client to run one of their major programmes commencing the following week! A fuming Badger immediately rang his line manager and angrily questioned their and the salesperson’s integrity. Clearly taken aback and embarrassed, the line manager was adamant that there had been no intent to sell the Badger to the client. Their annoyance with the salesperson was extreme and they divulged that there’d been previous issue with the individual over-stepping their authority. Things were resolved quickly. The line manager demanded an explanation from the salesperson who simply said they’d capitalised on ‘an immediate and irresistible opportunity’ that had arisen after the meeting. They left the company a month later, but the incident bolstered the Badger’s negative view of salespeople at the time.

The Badger’s project completed a few months later, and the line manager assigned him to a role in his business management team. During this assignment, the Badger learned that most salespeople are professional, focused, hardworking, and have high integrity – just like delivery people – and that siloed functional mindsets were counterproductive because everyone works for the same company. The Badger also learned that delivery people at all levels of experience should never think they aren’t also salespeople, and that recognising potential business opportunities must be an essential part of their psyche. Business opportunities present themselves to people in all positions, not just to a dedicated sales team, and a company will succeed more when people recognise these opportunities and feel empowered to take some action, even if it’s just telling the sales team! The old cliché ‘everyone’s a salesperson’ isn’t just a mantra, these days it’s a truism in both our personal and work lives.

Reflecting on a smart meter…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Project Management, Smart Meters

It’s ten years since the UK’s smart meter roll-out programme began, and it’s nine months since a smart meter was fitted in the Badger’s home. It seemed apt this week, therefore, to spend a little time considering whether the smart meter has helped reduce the household’s energy consumption. Accordingly, the Badger sat down at his desk with a cup of coffee to analyse how the household’s annual kilowatt hours have changed over the last seven years when the number of house occupants has been a constant. The analysis revealed that annual kilowatt hours dropped every year up until the smart meter was installed nine months ago. Energy consumption has dropped by 36% from the level seven years ago. Consumption since the smart meter was installed, however, is on track to be essentially on a par with the last pre-smart meter year. 

This means that the sizeable reduction in household consumption was achieved during the era of an old-fashioned, reliable, mechanical meter and not by installing a smart meter. It shows that personal discipline and behavioural change in using energy in the home has a bigger impact than having a smart meter per se.  Having a smart meter for nine months has, however, largely been a benign experience.  The In-Home Display still intermittently displays ‘Connection Lost – move the device closer to the meter’ which is irritating when the smart meter campaign’s website says it’ll work anywhere in your home.  The novelty of monitoring the In-Home display also wore off long ago, and now any hype about smart meters is now, frankly, just ignored. The household may have a ‘modern’ smart meter as part of its updated infrastructure, but as a consumer it doesn’t feel particularly beneficial or worthwhile.     

It seems that the jury’s out on whether households think the smart meter roll out programme has been worthwhile. The Badger, as a consumer paying for this programme through their energy bills, is dubious that it’s worth the billions that have been spent. The programme’s been running for a decade so far. It’s much delayed, and the current target set for 2024 looks both optimistic and somewhat irrelevant given the meters must all apparently be replaced if home gas boilers are to be adapted or replaced to use hydrogen.  One can’t help but feel that this programme has been over-sold and is turning out to be an expensive dud, at least for consumers.   

The simple fact is that a smart meter hasn’t helped to reduce energy use in the Badger’s household over the last nine months. It’s become like its old-fashioned predecessor, a box in a corner that just does its thing.  You don’t need a smart meter to save energy and hence money, you just need to change your household disciplines and personal behaviour…which, of course, costs you nothing.  

Hinkley Point C and the Marble Arch Mound…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Nuclear Power, Processes and Practices, Project Management, Science & Engineering

The recent BBC television series ‘Building Britain’s Biggest Nuclear Power Station’ about the building of Hinkley Point C on the UK’s North Somerset coast was enthralling. Television cameras not only followed people building the station, but also gave an insight to the engineering, processes, professionalism, and diligent attention to detail that they follow at every step of the build. The Badger found the sections covering the ‘Go/No Go’ decisions for a) pouring nearly 1000 lorry-loads of the correct specification of concrete for the nuclear island foundations, and b) installing the first ring of the reactor containment building, impressive and reassuring!

Normally we see little of such readiness and decision-making processes on major programmes and during his career the Badger was involved in numerous post-mortems of programmes that suffered from poor Go/No-Go readiness and decision-making disciplines, especially with regard to opening up to ‘live’ operations with end users. A failed major programme activity or a failed introduction to use with end users can often be traced back to poor Go/No-Go professionalism with decisions based on poor status information, poor risk assessment, and commercial or political priorities. It is, therefore, reassuring to see that things are being done right with regard to every aspect of readiness with Hinkley Point C.

The recent opening of the Marble Arch Mound in London, however, is a different endeavour. It’s recent opening before it was ready not only led to some ribald laughter in the Badger household, but also lots of derision on social media and in the press – see here, here, and here, for example.   Westminster City Council’s ’s CEO must have felt highly embarrassed at having to apologise via a statement on the Mound’s website that it hadn’t been ready for opening to paying customers. The Badger knew little of the ‘The Mound’, a phrase that seems apt for a horror story, before the tsunami of recent coverage, and so he explored further in a more objective frame of mind.   

The motive for building the ‘The Mound’ was to get people back into the shops, theatres, and restaurants of London over the Summer, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a temporary structure costing ~£2m of council taxpayers money that’s only in place until January 2022. It apparently fails to deliver what was promised.  On absorbing its history, the Badger felt that while the motive was laudable, the concept of ‘The Mound’, the way it was marketed, and its delivery were likely flawed from the outset. The Badger’s conclusion? ‘The Mound’ is a reminder that not every idea is a good one, not every delivery meets expectations, and not every decision is the right one.  It’s also a reminder of human fallibility which is, of course, something which cannot be countenanced at Hinkley Point C where everything must be perfect.