Back in September, I alluded to the impact that politics was having on project Condor. That impact reached a peak yesterday.
The Parent Company (TPC) have spent the last few weeks gathering requirements. It has, truth be told, been quite successful. Representatives from the outsourcing company in India have shown themselves to be slightly ignorant of how our business operates, but their knowledge of Use Cases has been encouraging and really helpful.
The problem is that this requirements gathering exercise has focused purely on what Condor's front-end application will do. No attention has been paid to the back-end core systems. They have assumed that everything below the web services interface layer is within my scope.... but it isn't. I have been given - on more than one occasion - a strictly limited scope and instruction not to 'get mugged' by taking on additional work. Politics. I have twice been told that we do not want to take the blame when something goes wrong. Aaaaarrrrrgh!!!
When I expressed my concerns over the gap in scope, no-one took any notice. Until yesterday.
My boss and I were talking about this scope gap, when he wondered aloud who our Business Unit thought was paying for this stuff - them or TPC. So I phoned the lovely K and asked.
She replied that they were paying for all the changes necessary for the product to work. Heartened, I explained about my enforced limitations, and my concerns that significant areas of requirements had not been included in anyone's scope nor budget. She thanked me and immediately got on the phone to G, my boss's boss. Later that afternoon, he came upstairs to talk to me and my boss about the situation. It didn't take long to convince him that it was 'reasonable' to expect us to do that work, since the outsourcing company were not going to do it, and it was our system, after all.
The upshot of it all is that I now have most of what I wanted in the first place. It would have been nice to manage the entire project, but I will still be responsible for providing the core functionality required for launch.
Although the project is still highly commercially sensitive - hence my use of the Condor code-name (not the real one) - once it is launched to the public, I will be able to reveal my involvement. I can now enjoy my weekend, and look forward to my final 5 hectic days at work before the holiday break.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Cost cutting folly.
As in most enterprises, people are the most critical element in any IT project. In projects involving highly-skilled tasks, like IT, it is arguably even more important to get the right people.
People also usually form the entire basis of the costs of a typical IT project - capital expenditure aside. It stands to reason, therefore, that there is a direct relationship between the cost of doing business (the number and quality of the people you employ) and the capability to deliver. When a company wants to cut costs, people are usually the first to go. This, of course, reduces a companies capacity to maintain its service, or deliver new products.
If this all sounds like common sense, it is. At least to most of us.
Royal Mail, however, apparently ignored this simple truth when they cut 30,000 jobs over the past few years. In this article from The Times, Trade Union Amicus claims that in some areas, it has often fallen to managerial staff to make up the shortfall, delivering the mail themselves.
What this does to the workload of managerial tasks is not clear. Who do they get to do their jobs? Or were they under-utilised anyway?
People also usually form the entire basis of the costs of a typical IT project - capital expenditure aside. It stands to reason, therefore, that there is a direct relationship between the cost of doing business (the number and quality of the people you employ) and the capability to deliver. When a company wants to cut costs, people are usually the first to go. This, of course, reduces a companies capacity to maintain its service, or deliver new products.
If this all sounds like common sense, it is. At least to most of us.
Royal Mail, however, apparently ignored this simple truth when they cut 30,000 jobs over the past few years. In this article from The Times, Trade Union Amicus claims that in some areas, it has often fallen to managerial staff to make up the shortfall, delivering the mail themselves.
What this does to the workload of managerial tasks is not clear. Who do they get to do their jobs? Or were they under-utilised anyway?
Hypocricy
I could never be a politician, for so many reasons. For starters I am not a very good liar, I tend to speak my mind more often that would be healthy for a political career, and I abhor hypocrisy.
In the Guardian, is this article in which Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, speaking about the recent American ban on online gambling, said "America should have learnt the lessons of Prohibition". There was a "real danger" she says, that the US laws would create the modern-day equivalent of speakeasies - venues that illegally served alcohol - online.
The fact that a complete legal ban on something simply pushes trade in that substance or practice underground is not new. If there is sufficient demand for something - alcohol, online gambling, cigarettes or sex for money - making it illegal it will not stop people wanting it, nor supplying it. Britain's puritanical legislation on prostitution, for example, has not stopped the trade. Perhaps the Governor of Nevada should have a chat with the FT about the Bunny Ranch.
In the Guardian, is this article in which Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, speaking about the recent American ban on online gambling, said "America should have learnt the lessons of Prohibition". There was a "real danger" she says, that the US laws would create the modern-day equivalent of speakeasies - venues that illegally served alcohol - online.
The fact that a complete legal ban on something simply pushes trade in that substance or practice underground is not new. If there is sufficient demand for something - alcohol, online gambling, cigarettes or sex for money - making it illegal it will not stop people wanting it, nor supplying it. Britain's puritanical legislation on prostitution, for example, has not stopped the trade. Perhaps the Governor of Nevada should have a chat with the FT about the Bunny Ranch.
