Reply to: Project death march

[suityou01]

Who are you? And what have you done with Suityou???

The penny dropped?

Good, now let's move on.

[Old Greg]

Who are you? And what have you done with Suityou???

Give it time and he'll be fine.

[MarillionFan]

Try making friends with the grossly overpaid architects? Win friends and influence people? Do some schmoozing yourself?

Never underestimate how important this is. Schmoozing with the right people and in the right way(positive/problem solving/in to together/mutual success) is huge! Huge! This is the difference
between renewal or termination, success or failure, or not having someone stab in you the back.

Do your moaning on paper, and keep your talking friendly and amiable. The skill you are being paid to learn is survival of the fittest. You could learn a thing or too from these permies of which you are so critical.

Again, could not agree more. Friendly, approachable, professional, knowledgeable and helpful are the key personality traits to use. Keep your moaning for the pub and take your frustrations out on anoymous nerds on a contracting forum.

And above all, keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep invoicing

Who are you? And what have you done with Suityou???

[suityou01]

Try making friends with the grossly overpaid architects? Win friends and influence people? Do some schmoozing yourself?

Do your moaning on paper, and keep your talking friendly and amiable. The skill you are being paid to learn is survival of the fittest. You could learn a thing or too from these permies of which you are so critical.

And above all, keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep invoicing

[Notascooby]

I wouldn't worry about you being tarred with a failed project.

Play the game to an extent, make changes but point out that a full regression test pack will need to be run. Its unlikely they have this, the testers or the environment to fulfil this.

You can sign off your unit tests but caveat that due to lack of knoweldge you cannot verify the downstream impact without afore mentioned testing.

This will sit in your dev environment for 6 months and go nowhere, where the requirements will be dropped, the workarounds will continue and they'll bring in IBM to come and design another failed project to replace the legacy (read - working and stable) platform with a steaming pile of poo that will cost 10X as much and offer a 10th of the functionality.

[jmo21]

Just get on with it then, report as I suggested earlier, and if someone ever gets on your case about it, you have evidence.

As others have said, it sounds like you may be the fall guy, and it is highly likely nothing you can do will change that.

Who is the client by the way?

[MyUserName]

Ah, I see.

The permie devs spotted that this was a poison chalice and have brought you in to be the fall guy.

Not a lot you can do. They have the ear of the hire ups and unless you can spot something drastic anything you still will be written off as the constant complaining of someone who is out of their depth.

If they are really smart then they will never have actually said to bring in a contractor (certainly they would not have put it in an email) and will have subtly warned that the job could not be done by an external party. Then when you crash they will exaggerate their previous complaints and spin it to look good.

[insur]

It seems ClientCo has been shedding staff for many years and off shoring development.

The staff fall into two categories, the first are the senior PMs who may have been coders backs in the 70's but have no up to date hard skills and therefore are unable contribute or lead on technical matters.

However, they are seasoned pros and know how to play the game and survive. They are the older broad waste line types who stand around posturing and waving their hands. Rather than concentrate on real project detail they are more interested in playing the game to satisfy their boss. It seems they have no desire to learn new skills at their age; they have done their stint and are happy to sit back and pass the baton to the next generation.

The second category is the permie devs\architects, who are very few in number and on incredible salaries, actually eye popping salaries! They report to the aforementioned PMs and what they say is gospel; they pretty much have the run of the place.

A bad word from them would see a contractor like me out of the door in no time.

They are the most ruthless group I have ever come across, they are able to manipulate and twist any situation to their benefit.

They are fully aware that jobs with salaries like theirs do not grow on trees; nothing will be allowed to compromise their positions.

They are fully aware of the issues with the aspect of the project that I have been assigned.
They have avoided taking on this piece of work themselves and a contractor was hired on their advice.

In a nutshell, the work that has been assigned to me is simply stated as a one line point on the project plan. The project started some time ago and this piece of work was considered small, now the PM will not own up to having understated the work, as doing so may have dire consequences for those on the gravy train.

In a startup meeting I tried to express the amount of work that was involved and highlighted how it needed to be broken down. At this meeting I highlighted all my concerns and a plan was agreed. However, over the coming days the PMs having given it more (political) thought chipped away at the plan and we were back to square one.

In terms of political manipulation I am completely out of my depth with these people. In the space of a week I seem to have surrendered to their will!

I'm a contractor; I'm paid on an hourly rate, perhaps that is all I should be concerned with. I should just play the game, tell them what they want to hear, do as much as I can and run the clock down.

[MyUserName]

Are you able to learn anything new or develop a desirable skill.

If so, what is the problem? You are getting paid well to train yourself up.

If the project goes wrong, so what? You notified them every week about it (I would email the PM and anyone else who you could claim has an interest) and they did nothing.

Keep invoicing, keep learing and know that regardless of everyone else you are behaving in a professional manner.

[EternalOptimist]

insur
making the assumption that you are the single coder.

we all know that most projects can be finished in 3 months, given a decent spec and some decent back up.
A monster project might take 6, and a fckng unbeliveable cyber bastid from hell might take longer.

so if you have identified the problem so soon, why worry ?
leave it for 12 weeks.
If its number 1, lack of spec or back up - you will have a few months to get it sorted, then an extension

If its a major whopper of a project, you can start asking for more coders. by which time you will be established, therefore lead dev, plus the inevitable extension.

notice the guys who are urging you to cya and act now are all pm types

they want the devs to do the work, PLUS take their responsibility, PLUS



fck em. fck em all

[darrenb]

Second week into gig, project scheduled to fail in 6 months, therefore will get extension.

It's a desperate situation, that's maybe why they decided to give in and hire a highly paid contractor. But it would be much more efficient if they hired the experienced people at the start to create projects, rather than be reactive and only hire them when things start to crash.

Tried to relay thoughts to PM but PM not interested.

Something I have noticed about PMs is that they think on a higher, more strategical level than humble folk like you or me. PMs have to consider broader issues like, how can we spin this project on as long as is humanly possible? The more senior the PM, the more strategical the thought process, until by the time you get to the executive level it is all financials.

Now, if you actually have your face to the flames all you care about is putting out those flames as efficiently as possible, but maybe you are missing the Greater Good?

[suityou01]

Ask yourself what Suity would do?

Note the signs of nervous breakdown and run like the wind

Well, rather more pertinently ask what would Suity do NOW? Right back then I would probably come on here, piss and moan, get pissed lots and struggle into work with a sore head and try and muddle through.

We really need more info. Why is the project doomed to fail? Are the requirements gathered? Is there a baseline? Scoping statement? PMP? Tonnes of tulip you can ask the PM for. So ask. In writing. Set a deadline.

Do you report weekly? If not, start. Planned activities, unplanned activities and time spent against each one. RAID log etc. Distribute this weekly to the PM, and senior devs.

Arrange a meeting to discuss the risks and issues you have raised. Press for decisions, mitigation actions. Suggest some of these. Be prepared for negativity at first, but once you start getting some shape to it people will buy in and with this momentum you can come out of this as the hero.

Your PM sounds like he is out of his depth. You have to be careful not to tread on his toes, but with every weekly report, and these RAID log meetings you are giving him more and more chances to help you. Minute these meetings and again circulate the minutes.

If after a while the issues are not being dealt with, quietly have a word with the project sponsor. Explain that as it stands good money is being thrown after bad. Don't use it as a moaning session, just give him the top 3 issues and your resolutions. These resolutions have to be credible, remember no sacred cows.

By papering over your arse in this way, being seen to be positive and constructive you will win friends and get support.

The project I am working on hasn't got a chance in hell of being delivered in time, but I am going through the motions and doing things properly (within reason). When the crunch comes, I will have to manage their tears, but in reality it was their project before I got there, and it was they who failed to plan, so from the moment I got hold of it I was always trying to answer the question "how long will this take?" but again the requirements I inherited were woeful so you ask for time to get the requirements straight. If they keep asking for deadlines, don't give them. Explain that you don't have enough at your disposal to give accurate deadlines, explain what you need from them in order to give accurate deadlines.

It is possible to be brutally firm without being aggressive, and people do appreciate this.

Worst case, you get tulipcanned and the next guy walks into a neatly managed project, in which case you did your bit and took one for the team - that's contracting. But you got experience of sorting out a buggers muddle that you can put on your cv and take with you.

Try and buck up, its not easy to be positive when all around you are sloping their shoulders but you can play them at their own game as I have outlined here.

Best of luck mate

The New Improved Suity

[insur]

Waterfall project?

Waterfall 2006 - International Conference on Sequential Development

Leave, keep your sanity and also important; get something 21st century on your CV and avoid getting these big brown waterfall skidmarks on it.

It's a kind of nothing approach here. I was hired to do specific code changes that permies (apparently) do not have time to do. The work involves making changes that impact the entire system. No one has scoped the changes or their impact.

It's a legacy system, the code for which has not been changed for up to a decade, as it just works.

Basically been told what they expect in a couple of sentences, the PM definitely did not understand what he was telling me, so he kept it short.

On the project plan this piece of work appears as a foot note.

[insur]

Was given certain assurances at interview time, transpires it was all bull.

While I can retain my sanity, shall invoice and carry on.

Shall teach them not to bull sh*t the next chap at interview stage!

Earning some dollars and helping the next chappie to gig here.

[jmo21]

Second week into gig, project scheduled to fail in 6 months, therefore will get extension.

Permies seem relieved, happy for me to take carry the can for failing to meet impossible project deadline.

Tried to relay thoughts to PM but PM not interested.

Project would struggle to meet deadline with three coders let alone just the one.

Permie coders, mostly architect level on super duper salaries happy to stay away and protect their fiefdom.

Project issues begining to drive me a little loopy, leading to a failure to write sentences.

dot dash dot...

If the PM will not listen, is there anyone else senior in the IT/dev team that is interested? A team lead, dev manager?

I'd simply drop into email, conversation with whoever necessary so that someone pays attention, even if it is the customer.

It might get your bollocks booted and potentially bagged from the role, but that's better than being a scapegoat later.

Otherwise, make sure you send a weekly email report summary to the PM where you end with how much you think the project will be finished by? eg 60% complete by Delivery Date because of XYZ reasons.

Then you have plenty of evidence that you alerted management ahead of the failure date.