A question of obligations

Dear Bob,

I’ve been a developer for over 20 years but changed platforms (mid-career system-level mainframe to Windows move) and do not yet have the breadth and depth that I had on the former platform. While there has and continues to be a lot of new areas to master, many of the most difficult master skill sets carry over quite nicely — things like multi-threaded/tasking development, synchronization, and intangibles such as process maturity and analytical skills.

I’m now on a project with a team leader who likes the adrenalin rush of new ideas. It often compels him to abandon works-in-progress before completion. Most serious: he designed some core code as a prototype, then quickly moved on to things he considers more interesting. We’ve built many layers of software around this core code without ever having done the badly needed analysis that would ensure it’s built right. We’re continually revisited it, and a succession of design changes have resulted in even more changes to the layers built around it.

The result is panic, missed deadlines, and in general, development without end. The costs are enormous and no one seems to have a clue as to how work habits and lack of process contributed to this nightmare. I have tried to balance my obligation to let others know of the risks associated with this approach with my relationship with the team leader, who tightly controls every shred of project information that emanates from the development team.

I have provided a comprehensive analysis that describes demonstrable problem scenarios that fellow team members seem to recognize as being on the money, and suggests reasonable remedies and provided estimates for completion. The team leader responded by explaining to management that we have not started fault testing yet.

It is both my inability to help, and rejection of a viable plan to save the project that has led me to float my resume. That has started to bear fruit.

Is there anything obvious I missed that I might have done that could have prevented the problems from occurring without engendering too much risk to my own career?

– Frustrated and moving on

Dear Frustrated …

That’s a hard question to answer.

But it’s a good question, similar to situations IT professionals face all the time – how to handle a manager afflicted, formally or informally, with attention-deficit disorder. Which is to say, a manager who’s better at launching a lot of cool, nifty ideas than at bringing any of them to completion in a disciplined, timely fashion.

To answer your question – is there anything you could have done differently or anything you might have done that you failed to do – I don’t know. And I’m absolutely certain of that.

If your company has an “open door policy” (a real one, not just window dressing) then yes, you should have availed yourself of it. That’s what it’s there for. And I’ll say as a near-absolute that any company that fails to institute bypass communication channels is asking for trouble. It’s nearly impossible to avoid putting bad managers in place from time to time. The only way to avoid having this problem proliferate is to put enough in the way of additional organizational listening channels in place so you can find out about bad managers quickly.

Which doesn’t help you. If you, in a reasonably direct way, took up the problem with the team leader and offered a way to complement his strengths with mechanisms to turn his prototypes into solid production code, I don’t really know what else you could have reasonably done without violating the chain of command. And if the company hasn’t established a set of accepted ways for you to let upper management know about the problem, I think it’s fair to conclude it didn’t want you to do that.

My take on the subject is that in a capitalist economy, you aren’t supposed to sacrifice your career for the good of the company. So leave with a clear conscience, knowing before you do so that as Ambrose Bierce pointed out over a century ago, the synonym for “absent” is “guilty.”

– Bob

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