This is a true story. The company names
have been changed.
Two projects
Acme was starting a project to
implement a new logistics application, and engaged Standard Consulting as their
implementation partner. When the logistics project started, a new manufacturing
system was already in progress, and was also expected to complete before the
logistics project.
There were a lot of custom reports
required for both manufacturing and logistics. Acme had identified a few
hundred necessary reports, including fifty reports for logistics that were
critical to go-live. The report development for the manufacturing module had
not gone well: many reports were incomplete and some reports that were done
were buggy. Acme decided to take more control of the reports development
process by assigning an Acme employee as the reporting team lead.
The schedule for reporting
The Standard Consulting project manager
asked the new reporting team lead for his schedule, but the reporting team lead
had no intention of developing one, as it seemed a waste of time. The project
manager asked, “How do you know you’ll be done the critical reports in time for
go-live?” The report team lead replied, “We’ll cross our fingers and hope for
the best. After all, we always come through in the end.”
The project manager continued to insist
on a schedule. Finally, the project manager prevailed. She had the two most
experienced report developers stop work on reports. These two developers were assigned
to define the development tool to use for each report, as well as the estimated
effort for coding, testing, and promotion to production environment. The
project manager used this information to build a schedule.
The reporting lead started to realize
there was a lot more to report development than just the coding. In addition,
the schedule made it clear that the fifty critical reports for go-live could
not possibly be completed in time.
However, the reporting lead was worried
about looking bad, and didn’t want anyone to know about the possibility that
the reports might not get finished. He asked the project manager to avoid
discussing the report schedule issue at the status meeting. Despite the schedule,
he hoped the reports would get done on time.
The project manager insisted that since
the problem had been identified, it had to be raised as a project issue. The
reporting lead finally agreed.
Getting some help
The project manager and the reporting
lead met with the logistics team and explained the problem. The logistics team
was upset about the reports at first, but then agreed to help solve the
problem.
The logistics team agreed to prioritize
their reports and, with discussion, it became clear that only two reports
actually had to be run on the day of go-live. Several others were not needed
until the end of the first week, others at the two-week mark, and most at month
end. There were even some reports that were not needed until year-end, which
was six months after go-live.
When the reports issue was raised at
the project status meeting, the manufacturing team offered to prioritize their
remaining reports to free up resources to work on the distribution reports. In
addition, the Acme project director offered to provide some extra report
writing staff.
The manufacturing and distribution
modules both were live on time. In addition, the critical reports for both
modules were available by the newly prioritized dates.
Conclusions
The reporting lead’s approach of
crossing his fingers and hoping for the best was not realistic. Once he understood
and made the other team members aware of the reporting delivery problems,
everyone pitched in to help solve the problem. The logistics team prioritized
their reports realistically, the manufacturing team delayed some of their
reports to free up resources, and the project director provided additional
help. None of this could have happened if the team lead kept his problem
secret.
Even though the client was responsible
for its own report development, the consulting firm project manager was right
to insist on a proper schedule for the reports. The reports were needed for the
implementation, for which the project manager was responsible. Without the schedule,
no one had any idea of the extent of work involved, and it was impossible to
predict success or failure.
Copyright
2015 Debbie Gallagher
