Working in a Cant-Say-No Environment
In response to Paul M. Ingevaldson’s article in the October 29, 2007 issue of Computerworld, I have some troubling insight to present. Suppose an IT worker is stuck in an environment where their management refuses to decline a customer’s increasingly absurd requests. Likewise, ever increasingly absurd time and budget requirements are expected to be met. I argue that this is increasingly the case in swaths of commercial IT and development contracts. Good contracts and positions exist, but how can a worker reverse or combat the effects of these trends, assuming they are reluctant to leave their current position (for whatever reason)?
I agree that tactfully discussing the reasons for saying ‘no’ on any and all necessary items is a start, but there must be a more concerted effort to involve the team. Make sure that everyone knows that the actual spec the team considers relevant differs in key metrics from the spec that management agreed to, and refer to the actual spec in all possible meetings where the artificially low deadlines are pressed. This way, the efforts of IT to produce good estimates and the reluctance of others to accept those estimates can be addressed and brought out in the open. Of course, there may be contract disputes or other political issues afoot, but the programmers and system administrators cannot be expected to answer for unrealistic specifications and deadlines.
Moral: Just because it takes nine months for one woman to have a baby, that doesn’t mean you can produce a baby in one month from the efforts of nine women.