Thoughts on Enterprise IT Projects and Aggressive Schedules (Part Two)

Increasingly, in cultures that encourage aggressive schedules become inclined to pass out blame at the lowest-level workers vs. take accountability for suboptimal planning...



I have yet to visit a Fortune enterprise where infrastructure team isn't getting beat up for wanting to follow a disciplined process. Production is king and operations teams need to follow more rigorous processes while avoiding shortcuts in order to ensure system availability. Most operations groups are considered cost centers and suffer from the ability to be close to the business and therefore do the best they can with the resources allotted. So frequently, we hear the question: "Why can't these guys ever meet their schedules?"

This frequently practiced behavior should beg the answering to at least a few questions, including but not limited to:

• Who is really at fault when you believe or are forced to believe there is no such thing as a bad schedule, only bad performances that resulted in missing the scheduled date?
• If the date is missed, does it truly matter? Will the business more easily forgive you if you deliver high quality and under budget if late or would they prefer on time, low quality and over budget?
• Is the purpose of the scheduling all about planning or is it about goal setting? Work that is not performed according to the plan invalidates the plan. Nothing more, nothing less.

So, what would it take for your organization to acknowledge that a missed schedule indicts the planners, not the workers? Even if the workers are bumbling boneheaded incompetent idiots, a plan that takes careful note of their inadequacies can help to minimize the damage. However, a plan that takes little/zero account of realities is not just useless but utterly dangerous.

Cultures that are broken exhibit the lack of accountability in the right places. The people who set the schedule, not just the one who failed to meet it, need to be held accountable....