Advice Line | Bob Lewis » Join a challenged project or not?

May 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Join a challenged project or not?

TAGS: General

Dear Bob ...

I am systems engineer and architect and recently have been offered a position with the architecture group of a large-scale information systems project. This project is about halfway through its contract period. It has been late on its first few deliverables, and its next deliverable will also be late. There is evidence of serious scalability problems. The top three levels of project engineering management have been sacked, and new people brought in.

I spoke to the project's new Chief Engineer. I asked him questions about what he thought the problem was, and how he intended to deal with them. His answers always had to with more and better engineering  He never mentioned requirements.

This is a very large-scale project, with a lot of parts that were not designed to work together that need integrating. I believe that requirements provide a convergence point for multiple independent integration efforts, a "forcing function" that increases unity of effort. If the top of the food chain doesn't understand this, then I would have to convince them that this is true before any useful work could be done. I don't think I have sufficient time to do that on this project.

I know that when the stuff hits the fan, it tends to stick to everybody in the room.  I think I could add value to this project. I could perhaps keep it from failing, even if I probably can't make it a great success.

My question is this: is it possible to join up with a project like this and not have it hurt my career?

- DANGER/opportunity

Dear In Danger ...

While I generally don't use the term "requirements" (it's lost most of its meaning: I prefer to ask business users, "How do you want to run your part of the business differently and better?") it appears we think along the same lines. You can't design or integrate anything when you view it as solely an engineering challenge.

So to answer the question you didn't ask, I'd advise staying away from this project. Engineering is difficult enough when everyone understands the point of it all. Without that, a project that's already behind schedule will almost certainly deteriorate into unresolvable arguments whose source is misalignment of core assumptions on the part of the arguers.

To answer the question you did ask: Sure. If the company that contracted to deliver the project is run by reasonably intelligent executives who recognize the value of an employee who manages to bring into port a ship that by all rights should have sunk without a trace, there's a lot of opportunity in a situation like this.

There's also a lot of risk, since the more common response among executives who are dealing with a highly visible mess is to "hold people accountable" - managementspeak for "find scapegoats and publicly hang them."

- Bob

Posted by Bob Lewis on May 23, 2006 06:05 AM

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