Awakenings
For years we've been working the code mines built many moons ago using good old VB. I don't mean the new-fangled VB.NET that has taken the development world by storm. No, I mean the clunky VB that has evolved over several releases that any developer could have, and has, had a hack at, each with their own style and ways of solving problems. Hell, even the office cleaners have had a go at the system we support. As a result, our applications tend to have a somewhat organic feel to them, making them difficult to maintain and modify.
We all thought that this was the nature of the beast, but also had a nagging feeling that somewhere there must be a better way. In a department that is concerned mainly with supporting an existing system there is little time or motivation to look outside the window at what's going on in the rest of the development world.
Then someone over-heard a conversation about Design Patterns in the pub and came back frothing at the mouth with evangelical zeal. So we immediately bought the Gang of Four's seminal Elements of reusable OO Software.
A few weeks later, managing to wean ourselves off the London Lite celebrity pages, we got round to reading Elements of Reusable Software and were surprised and disappointed to find that our world didn't change over-night. Indeed, as none of us are computer science graduates, after reading the book we were somewhat lost as to how design patterns could help us. It dawned on us that moving to use Design Patterns was going to take a lot of effort.
Serendipitously, a few weeks later, a new system was required. "Let's use design patterns and C#", one of the office cleaners said. The team bubbled with the kind of excitement rarely seen in what is essentially a support team. How refreshing is a new-to-us but tried-and-tested methodology in a desert dev landscape of tweaking reports and adding tables to convoluted in-line SQL statements.
We grafted like dogs and read like Oxford scholars, with a new outlook on our work, working as team, communicating ideas in our new Design Pattern language, using words like "Visitor" and "Strategy", feeling as though we were doing things the right way. The application was developed and delivered on time. We got immense job satisfaction. Damn it, we were happy in our work.
Sadly, in the Sahara, new developments like this one are few and far between and now, like the Robert DeNiro in the film Awakenings, we are back to our old ways, working the mines on our own, writing minor enhancements and tweaking reports, glued to our terminals all day, speaking only to say, "See you tomorrow" as we run for the door at 5pm. In our dreams we code free in the verdant fields of design patterns and object orientation, only to wake with tears in our eyes at the loss of the sweet life we briefly tasted.
Why do projects never
benefit from 'lessons learned'?
Because they can’t afford to. It’s not rocket science, honestly. I’ve lost count of the number of post implementation meetings I’ve doodled my way through only to come out and see the same, ineffectual processes being implemented elsewhere. Perhaps for companies that have their own, in house IT department things are different, but within the IT services industry, to spend time restructuring existing project strategies would spell disaster.
Take any development project that is end date driven and imagine that it went over budget by at least twenty percent because of additional manpower, overtime, changed requirements and new kit. Sound familiar? Now assume that of this additional twenty percent, the customer was only asked to stump up five percent because that’s what the project manager estimated the change to the requirements would cost to develop. With me so far? That still leaves a fifteen percent overspill that the project has to absorb. So what do you do next time? The answer should be simple really. You’d look at where you went wrong the last time and try to make sure you didn’t fall down the same hole. You’d possibly re-evaluate manpower requirements, extend the timescale for each phase of work to be completed, and spend more time requirements gathering and analysing the customer’s business, to ensure the proposed solution met their needs. You may also want to consider not employing the same management team again!
The only problem with doing that is that time is money, and longer project timescales mean higher costs and potentially no new business. In a climate where nobody really wants to pay for quality, just delivery, organisations are stuck in a never ending cycle of bidding on a shoestring in order to attract their customers, and that can only ever spell disaster if the bid is successful. At that stage nobody really knows who will be working on the project, whether they have the appropriate training, even whether they’re simply counting down the days until retirement. In my experience the assumption that you’re going to have all your best people working on a single project to bring it romping home, on time and to budget, is a far greater fairy tale than Cinderella. So all anybody can do is guess … and trim the contingency factor down to less than three percent total elapsed time.
Or you can hire in a rip-roaringly expensive consultancy team to tell you what your staff have been telling you for years, except they get to do it on funky headed notepaper and charge you an extortionate fee only for you to file their similarly funky proposal in the circular in-tray. The rather unpleasant truth is that for most companies it still remains more cost efficient to get the business first and worry about going over budget later, because at the end of the day if there is no new business forthcoming then learning lessons is a wholly moot point.
Contractors Vs
Permies: The Great Divide
When it comes to Contractors and Permies, is there a divide? Having been both sides of this very emotive fence, I have to admit that there isn’t a simple answer. Yet, if I had to set foot in either camp, I’d be inclined to agree that yes, there is. This schism seems to stem from three fundamental issues: firstly, a basic lack of understanding of a contractor’s role; secondly, dire project planning, and thirdly - dare I say it – the green-eyed monster rearing its ugly head.
Money. Its pursuit is allegedly the root of all evil and yet every one of us chases it mercilessly, however we choose to work. I still remember the good old days of pay related performance appraisals and the somewhat distant memory of elation when, after one very successful meeting with my HR manager, I received a three percent pay rise and a bonus! In five years of being a permie it only ever happened once, and believe me, I worked hard! Then a contractor joined the team as our Winrunner expert, a highly paid and perceptually lazy contractor, at least in my opinion, and therein lay the problem. He was doing what I wanted to do, what I had been angling to do for two years, but had never been given the opportunity to break into. Why? Because the project could afford neither the training nor my inevitable inefficiency when timescales and budget were on the critical path. I wasn’t even capable of hitting the ground crawling, let alone running! As hard as it was to swallow, they needed an expert and I simply wasn’t an option.
A contractor should be a short-term solution to a short-term problem, but too many of us find ourselves as long-term solutions to problems that many project managers simply ignore, and so our fate is sealed. We become lynch pins, and somewhat irreplaceable, because of our knowledge base. It’s no surprise to learn that this causes immense resentment amongst the permanent members of staff who should be trained to take over from us. Inevitably they’re seconded into less challenging projects where bums on seats rank higher than suitability. Their skill sets remain static and even seem to decline in direct relation to their increasing rancour as their jobs are farmed out to those who allegedly know what their doing.
I say this because as we all know there are many contractors out there who have cottoned on to this practice and abuse it shamelessly. Their poor skill sets and appetite for high daily rates give the rest of us a bad reputation, and it’s an injustice to permanent employees that deserve the opportunity to build meaningful careers within their own organisations. Perception is everything these days, and until companies recognise that they need to invest in their staff - instead of hiring outside - this divide will continue to exist.
Perils & Pitfalls
of looking for an IT role
The last time I found myself in the position of being out of work, I’m too sexy by Right Said Fred was top of the charts. Since then I have moved seamlessly between companies and roles on several occasions.
Regrettably, after the rather unfortunate collapse of the start-up I eagerly joined a few years ago, I find myself in the situation of being labelled a “bum” by my friends, I think they mean it jokingly but there are days where I ponder this (I am sure this is how complexes develop). It has been a frustrating, informative and at times depressing three months since I found myself in this position. Suffice to say, the recruitment market is not what I remember.
I consider myself to be a highly skilled senior level IT manager and before this bout of unemployment (deliberately intended to sound like a nasty disease, picture the Ebola virus) I would have considered myself highly employable. Certainly when I found myself newly infected, sorry I meant unemployed, I spent the first few weeks lounging around and playing golf. Not for a moment did I think I would have a problem finding a job.
How wrong I was.
When I finally grew bored of lowering my handicap and started my search, I encountered my first hurdle. When I was last out of work, probably after watching Hudson Hawk on VHS, I conducted my search via newspapers and specialist magazines but now there was a plethora of websites. I was familiar with one or two of these from my own recruitment efforts for the companies I had worked for, but which site was best suited to my search?
After intensive research I managed to whittle the long list of websites down to a few, and I started to apply for select roles that interested me and then I waited. Nothing. Apart from the automated responses saying my application had been received, I heard nothing.
A week later I phoned the respective agencies to ask how my applications were progressing. Not one recruitment agent accepted my call – they were either on another call, had just stepped out of the office or had magically vanished (if recruitment companies ever want to cut costs then I suggest they dispense with desks, it’s not like their staff are ever at their desks).
Eventually a kind recruitment agent took pity on me, either that or they got bored with my phone calls every thirty minutes, and took my call. After locating my CV on their system he informed me that they would not be proceeding with my application as I had insufficient skills. Surprised by this I sought clarity and was told what I lacked. My jaw dropped like a dotcom stock when the bubble burst. I had those skills. I tried to explain it to the agent but I might as well have been explaining nuclear physics to a wall.
I had a similar conversation with a few more agents (who I also hounded until they relented and spoke to me) over the coming days and I could feel frustration creeping up on me. After all these months, frustration and I are good friends. A month had passed and I was no closer to finding a new role, arguably I was further away. My CV wasn’t even getting past the gatekeepers. This was going to be tougher than I expected.
To be continued…
Pecunia
For the seventh day of seven months and seven years he pressed the automatic door button outside the anonymous brown stone building in the heart of Whitehall. He nodded a squinting hello at the ever changing face above the regulatory blue lapelled shirt, badged “Central Security”. Too many names came and went for relationships to be struck with these representatives of safety who silently patrolled the dusty staff lobby. These were not the friendly round faces of the public reception (open Monday to Friday 8.45-4.00) who greeted everyone like long lost friends. No, their steely sobriety did not invite you in.
Barry held his breath and swiped the thick Perspex pass that hung comfortably on a strong ribbon of gold round his neck. He liked the idea of a gold ribbon, rather than the now standard red, as he imagined it a sign of Olympian glory, a medal of honour, a subtle statement of superiority. As the security tube swished open and he stepped inside, he wondered, as he often did, whether he would be sucked upward and outward into infinity, beyond the stars and to a planet where – he never got beyond that thought as the internal door opened and breathing once more he continued on his way.
He passed no one as he travelled to the upper floor through silent, rubber floored corridors, de-sensitised to flapping notice boards and empty open plan areas scattered with pot plants, pencils and Dell PC monitors. In an hour or so these desks would be filled with the chattering civil servants and cheerful contractors who worked harmoniously for the Department, but for now, silence.
At 7 am he sat. For seven years, seven months and seven days, Barry made the precise journey along grey pavements, past pseudo Italian coffee shops, through pockets of Victorian gloom and lively Wi Fi corners to his realm tucked clandestinely behind the top floor server room, from where, if he strained his neck very slightly, he could see the southerly corner of Big Ben.
At 7pm. he precisely reversed the process.
Nobody asked and nobody cared.
Barry found Pecunia by chance, her beauty and simplicity struck his cyber-driven heart with relentless love, but he was mindful just to watch her, love and nurture her from afar. He caressed her in his dreams and loved her more each day.
His three month contract ran out, but nobody asked him to leave, nobody questioned his role. Suddenly, the Department merged with another then another. A myriad of staff supporting new IT systems and processes appeared and disappeared. But Barry stayed. For seven years, seven months and seven days, like the dishevelled desks and dusty spider plants; he was seen unseen.
At 7pm after seven years, seven months and seven days he sadly shutdown his beloved Pecunia. A single tear and she was gone.Through hundreds of fake transactions, Pecunia gave him seven million pounds, a modest slice of tax payer’s money he felt, safe in a Cayman Island account.
At 9.30 am the next day, Barry looked reverently down from his comfortable premier class seat on the world’s favourite airline, at the distinct speck that was the building where not one person wondered about the empty void behind the server room wall.