This is a true story. The company name
has been changed.
Background
The Acme Corporation and its two
subsidiaries were outsourcing their order taking and fulfillment functions to
Standard Inc. Every month, Standard
would send a file of orders taken and shipped so that Acme and its subsidiaries
could record entries in their financial systems.
Standard would create one file each
month and split it into three, so the file design and content had to be capable
of loading into the three different financial systems used by Acme and its
subsidiaries.
The three companies would need to
define common requirements for the incoming file. A facilitator worked with
financial, sales, fulfillment, tax, and systems representatives from Acme and
its subsidiaries to define the common requirements.
The situation
With so many participants involved and
multiple organizations and systems to serve, progress on the common design was
very slow.
In addition, many issues surfaced
during the design discussions. They were documented in minutes of the meeting
and assigned to individuals for follow up. However, some issues were very
time-consuming to resolve and held up progress on the design.
When the deadline was reached and the
requirements were not completed, the Standard Inc. systems analyst started to
attend the requirements sessions to learn what she could about the
requirements.
Between requirements meetings, several
participants were sending email and phone messages to the analyst at Standard,
letting her know about the various issues and proposed resolutions.
The Standard systems analyst began to
receive twenty, then thirty, and then forty messages per day about design
concerns.
Then, as the technical specifications
were being developed at Acme and the two subsidiaries, there were additional
questions. At fifty messages per day, the systems analyst at Standard began to
feel like she was drowning in email.
The blame game
The staff at Acme and its subsidiaries
complained that the Standard analyst was unresponsive and not able to answer
questions or address issues. They were beginning to question the ability of
Standard to complete the necessary files. Standard, however, felt that Acme was
not being fair, as the design was late being completed, and issues were
continuing to be raised long after Standard had expected them to be settled.
The project manager reviewed several of
the emails with the facilitator who had been working with the participants to
create the functional design.
The content of each message required assessment of the impact on other aspects of the design. In addition,
there were frequently other parties to consult before a resolution could be
reached. For instance, if Acme head office wanted sales orders to be summarized
differently, the two subsidiaries would have to be consulted to see if the
change would be acceptable. On top of these considerations, the volume of
messages to be dealt with was very high.
They concluded that Standard’s analyst
could not possibly have time to answer the volume of issues and questions in
addition to the work she already had to do. Unfortunately, Standard’s analyst
did not have help, and getting someone at Standard assigned and then up-to-date
on the project and issues would take a long time.
However, the facilitator had been
involved in the requirements sessions already with all parties, so was
knowledgeable about the project details.
The project manager assigned the
facilitator to coordinate all issues and questions. Everyone wanting to
question or raise an issue with Standard’s analyst had to send it to the
facilitator. The facilitator would coordinate all the requests, prioritize, and
summarize them for a once-daily phone meeting with the analyst at Standard. In addition,
the facilitator would do all the coordination between Acme and its subsidiaries
for requests for changes.
Epilogue
It took a few weeks for the backlog of
issues and questions to be cleared up. However, the assignment of the
facilitator to work as an assistant to Standard’s analyst worked well, and the
backlog lessened. In addition, when the analyst had a question or issue for
Acme, she could have the facilitator coordinate with Acme and the subsidiaries,
and determine a common answer. With so many parties to consider, this
coordination saved a lot of time for the analyst.
Conclusion
The project manager had heard complaints
from both sides. Acme complained about how unhelpful and unresponsive Standard
was, while Standard blamed Acme for causing the project to be so late.
However, the project manager realized
that pointing fingers was not getting the job done. So, he focused on assessing
and solving the problem.
The problem was that the analyst at
Standard had too much work. The project manager’s solution was to assign an
extra resource, a knowledgeable one, to help out the analyst.
Copyright
2015 Debbie Gallagher
