Work rants: project schedules

I fully empathise with Dilbert.

Last month, 1 multi-systems multi-vendor project which came under me by virtue that my system accounted for the lion share of the effort & schedule, was hit by a total screwball.

We had been working out the requirements for weeks, and at end of 3rd week of November, I suddenly got an email from the users that they had commited a delivery date of 20 December to their SVPs.

Apparently, what happened was that they had consulted one of the systems i/c for a date, who forgot to check with the other systems, went on to inform that earliest possible date was 20 December.  And his part of the development accounted for less than a third of my section's development.

Requirements had yet to be finalised (2 revisions came after that) and solution proposal not even out!  But as a result, I am being arm-twisted to meet that deadline by delivering the project in stages.

Fine!  We did our best.  But up to today, solution proposal is still not signed off - despite protracted meeting last week.

 

This month, 1 Dec, I had another prelim meeting on a newly assigned project - a brand new CRM system for one of the company's major subsidiary.  The President & CEO of the sub wanted delivery by September 2009.

According to our processes, it'd take 2-3 months to get the RFP out, and another 2-3 months to award the contract, leaving just a few months for any vendor to deliver the product.

When I asked the BMs how or why Sept 2009 was set, when the previous CRM project took more than a year for vendor to deliver, and 1 year after first phase implementation, the system has yet to get the data clean-up from the migration and not all functions are delivered.

Answer: Prez & CEO set the date, all SVPs are now committed to it.

Great, an arbitrarily defined date, which bears no relevance to processes, or commercial needs, or statutary requirements.

I wish they had asked the PCEO these questions about real significance of Sep 2009:

1. What would it mean for the company if the CRM came in Sep 2009?

2. What would it mean for the company if the CRM came in later?

I was just given requirements on Monday, and they want to rush for Architecture Review on Friday.

No way I'm gonna bust my ass over such.

Did I mention it's my first time as Project Manager?

Until now, my role had primarily been support and PL for smaller scale projects.  I never had to follow the processes for the large scale projects.

Apparently, the project had been ping-pong'ed between the Corporate & the Commercial delivery team.  I don't think anyone wanted to take responsibility for it.

Heck, maybe I'm chosen to be the scapegoat, but I don't care if it is so.

I'll just do my job, and set the project schedule to what is feasible.

Maybe they think that with the job market being super soft, staff should be willing to burn candles at both ends, but not me.

I never demanded my vendors to do overtime as a matter of policy, and I believe fair wages for fair work done.

For an arbitrarily set target, it won't mean much to the client even if everybody busted their ass delivering it on time.