I was working on a much larger project but my boss wanted me to take a small break. There was a small data export project that was required by another division. The support group said it was trying to find the best solution but they were really stringing the business group along. First analyzing one technology and making promises of delivery, then starting all over with another technology a few months later. The process had been going on for more than two years with no solution in sight. The business department, with managements approval went directly to IT with a few questions.
Is this possible?
What is the estimate?
The IT department did a small proof of concept over a few weeks to check the feasibility of such an interface. Well, despite being in the middle of summer vacations it was possible to rally enough of the business people and the IT people to have a successful test. It was suggested with a very modest budget and 4 – 6 months of developer time it was possible to deliver all of the business departments requested functionality.
Of course the business group rushed back to their boss two levels above everyone else to insist that this was the path to success for the future. Thus it was ordered from the big boss himself to the support team that IT should do the data export for the business department.
In order to continue, we would need the same expert resource who did the proof of concept. All this was made more complicated by the fact that management had just told the bosses to reduce the number of external consultants, and so each boss had passed this golden nugget of wisdom to his subordinate until it hit our bosses boss. Well, it was more of a historical anomaly that we had three guys working in one group from two different companies who were supporting the financial interfaces.
In the same way that most fairy tales start, a long time ago in the deepest unlit corner of the building was an interface team and they were staffed by a single company. This company shall remain nameless as it offers no addition insight on how things happen (or don’t happen).
Over the years the technical support group was slowly being whittled down due to attrition as well as design. One of the remaining project people, Paul, was tempted to go work for a small insurance company that was starting to get into banking and so he jumped at the opportunity. But Paul was a good guy and was familiar with the interfaces that he had supported all those long years, so rather than a nice clean formal handover of the interfaces his new company stepped up and offered their services to fill Paul’s spot with, well, Paul.
Then came the dark time, when financial ruin cast clouds over all horizon and the support contracts were made more and more restrictive for less and less cash. This strange constellation was accepted due to the current budgetary strains. Eventually Paul gave way to Martin, Andreas, and finally Zachary. Zachary was a very quick study and learned his tasks and became indispensable
in his own area.
Yet, Zachary was no match for Boss Finley who had a real penchant for following dictates from above despite how unrealistic they were. The handover was never formally made but according to all the contracts Martin and Juergen who were officially supporting all activities related to Zachary’s interfaces.
Thus a plan was hatched by my boss. We would try and get approval for Zachary to create the new extract program. If we could do this we would have Zach back at his desk and all the “know how” for his interfaces would be once again under our control. However, if Zach was supporting his old interfaces then who would create the data extract program. We will have Zach supporting the interfaces that Juergen and Martin should be supporting so then Juergen and Martin would write the extract. Actually, as bizarre as it sounds, it could just work.
It was the end of the year and there was the usual end of year budget fiddling, but we managed to get our resource. Zach would start a bit later than expected but he was back at his desk before the end of January. The project team was not ready for him so he did general support and ad hoc tasks.
The project itself should be starting in February or March but Zach, or well, Juergen could start immediately.
Well, work did not start immediately, but use of the budget did and for that reason it was actually lucky that Zach didn’t start until the end of January. However, work on the data extract was indeed well underway by the first of March. It would have been great style to begin with a specification describing which systems reports would be required, which fields would be extracted, and what the format the output would look like. Yet most of these questions had been answered during the proof of concept, the format was decided in the interim to be simply a comma separate file as the project group still didn’t really exist yet. Most everything was clear.
It was not so clear cut to the support group who owned the system and who did not want the export to take place. There were two reasons for this. The good and the petty. The good reason was that any new data extract processes that should be installed on their system could impact them and thus must be thoroughly vetted. The petty reason was that if indeed this new data export was successful, then a portion of their kingdom (and budget) would be going to another department, and they just couldn’t have that.
This meant we had to write a specification including testing and performance. It is not that these are unreasonable requests but typically this was the type of request that should have been done after the proof of concept seven months before, or perhaps even at the analysis for a budget 4 months prior. Shucks, it could have been requested at the beginning of the year prior to the external resource being contracted.
It seems to be a bit of gamesmanship between different groups especially when the IT department gave an estimate that was perhaps 20% of the time and cost of the support groups estimate for purchasing and configuring some additional software.