When should technical people become involved in a project?

[Ancalagon44]

Can I get an outside opinion on something?

So, I am a senior developer contracting at a company X.

There is a project that I am the lead developer on. Lets call this project B, which was developed to replace A. B1, what is now live to the public, was developed by a guy who owns a company that we bought part ownership in. We will call this guy F.

Back in March, I was hired to develop a replacement to B1 - B2. B1 had not gone live yet, but we knew it was bad enough that it would at the least need significant work. They did not want to ask F to do this work, due to politics. He is apparently difficult to work with - I dont know, never met him. So, they hired me to basically develop something that was better than what F had done, but do it in house so that it can be easily maintained. However, one day, F phoned our CEO and asked him to put B1 live, so that his replacement for A, A2, could go live. Our CEO agreed without consulting anyone. B1 was so bad that we had clients quitting within days. I think we have lost at least 3 clients, some of them major, and lots of others only stayed because they have been promised that B2 will address all of their concerns. Plus we had to resurrect A to allow them to do their work - lots would have quit had we not done that.

So it was a disaster. The CEO did take responsibility at least, eventually.

So now B2 is looking good, and we are planning to put it live end of May, as far as I know. Yesterday, there is a project/product meeting. No technical people at all are invited, not me, not any of my colleagues. In this meeting, they talk about the future of the B series of products, and B3. B3 is to be the next iteration of B2, but developed with proper requirements elicitation and apparently with several exciting ideas that will make it better. Yes, B2 has not gone to market, we do not know what clients do or do not like about it. They also talked about other related products, that share a common database structure but are aimed at different markets. And they also talked about B2 and the reports in it, and decided that they need some outside help to make the reports "better". They dont yet know what they dont like about the current reports. They have been testing and giving feedback, so I have fixed all of their complaints about the reports thus far, and to my untrained eye, they dont look bad, and are a massive improvement over B1's reports. But now this other guy is coming in at 11 to have a look. Bear in mind, the people who arranged that he come in, do not know how the reports are generated, so I'm not sure he can help.

I'm furious, for two reasons:
1. B1 was a screw up because the CEO did not stop to ask for feedback on B1 before launching it - not even from technical people who were busy developing the replacement. So it was a screw up. Yesterday, they have a meeting to plan a roadmap, without any technical staff present. History repeats itself. They had one non technical business intelligence guy there, that is it. Why not involve at least one technical resource? I'm not saying it has to be me, I just think you should have technical staff involved at the beginning of any project discussions.
2. Dont bring in someone else to finish the reports without at least discussing it with me. Firstly, I can advise you on what kind of person we might need to do them properly. There are 100 million different ways of generating reports, and if they get someone in without the right skills, it will be a waste of time. Secondly, its insulting when you get someone in to finish my work, when you yourself do not know what is wrong with my work. EDIT: also its very late in the project's lifecycle to get someone in work on reports. Ideally he should have been involved from the beginning, but he wasnt because they decided that B2's reports should be the same as A's, not B1's.

Am I right to be hugely irritated?

 

[Jaydip]

You should.Looks like a complete project management disaster to me.How on earth teachnical people are not considered stakeholders? don't you have some kind of tech lead who can talk with this guys?

 

[Ancalagon44]

There are 3 technical people in the company - me, a guy who is sort of my boss (more experienced than me) and our database expert.

Its not that we dont have the expertise, its that the management doesnt involve technical staff in decision making. We dont have any junior developers at all.

Our HR guy came to chat to me last month to ask for advice in getting a CTO in, which I think we desperately need.

 

[Jaydip]

Agreed.It seems that your CEO is a bit delusional about the success of this project.Can you go and have a friendly chat with him while reminding him you guys can really help to make this project a success?

 

[Ancalagon44]

I've emailed the HR guy who is practically second in command and seems to have a better head for this kind of stuff. Based on what he says, I'll decide what to do.

I'm actually in a rage.

EDIT: I hear they have found a CTO candidate...

who is a personal friend of the CEO...

and they havent had him interviewed by anyone technical...

 

[TheKub]

Personally, as an impartial observer I would say perhaps you are taking too much of an offence over perceived criticisms with your product. You said yourself that you are not a report expert , not that you can't produce what they ask but perhaps they are seeking outside help with things like design and flow which I would not expect the technical team to necessarily be experts at.

If I was in your shoes I too would be perturbed about the call the CEO made, but ultimately, your situation is not unique it happens all the time everywhere. As for when technical teams should be involved I can only mention my experience. I have been on teams that constantly complained about not being included on first round discussions so a change was made so that occurs. Now they complain they are stuck in "all these non-technical meetings". My philosophy, let the customers\consumers\audience for the product to develop their needs and wants then engage the technical teams to determine feasibility.

 

[beginner99]

My philosophy, let the customers\consumers\audience for the product to develop their needs and wants then engage the technical teams to determine feasibility.

My experience is if you can't talk to the developers themselves and the don't really get what you want, then you will get a piece of crap or the project will take double the time and double the costs. At least 1 technical person (eg. the lead developer) must fully understand what is wanted. Getting that info from a business analyst or such is just not enough

@OP

You are always free to leave. Escalate and if they do nothing start searching fro greener pastures.

 

[purbeast0]

this sounds like a product for the government, and the government thinks they know better about everything technical than the technical contractors they paid to get the job done.

i say that because this sounds exactly like something i have worked on in a government environment before. glad i'm no longer there.

 

[Jaydip]

I've emailed the HR guy who is practically second in command and seems to have a better head for this kind of stuff. Based on what he says, I'll decide what to do.

I'm actually in a rage.

EDIT: I hear they have found a CTO candidate...

who is a personal friend of the CEO...

and they havent had him interviewed by anyone technical...

Sorry Man get a new job that's all I can say.No one can work like that.

 

[Train]

My experience is if you can't talk to the developers themselves and the don't really get what you want, then you will get a piece of crap or the project will take double the time and double the costs. At least 1 technical person (eg. the lead developer) must fully understand what is wanted. Getting that info from a business analyst or such is just not enough

effing this

 

[BrightCandle]

Its certainly a recipe for disaster that is for sure. Failing to provide adequate guidance to the technical team and having them advise you is pretty dumb. Its not uncommon, most companies have managers who believe they know how technology works and make terrible calls day in day out.

But in this case the thing you need to do is let go of the anger. You are not the product you code, and the bad decisions of others are not your responsibility. For your own happiness focus on things within your control, so what you can to fix things but once you have done all you can you just need to let it play out. You will be happier when you don't stress over the problems you can do nothing about.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Personally, as an impartial observer I would say perhaps you are taking too much of an offence over perceived criticisms with your product. You said yourself that you are not a report expert , not that you can't produce what they ask but perhaps they are seeking outside help with things like design and flow which I would not expect the technical team to necessarily be experts at.

If I was in your shoes I too would be perturbed about the call the CEO made, but ultimately, your situation is not unique it happens all the time everywhere. As for when technical teams should be involved I can only mention my experience. I have been on teams that constantly complained about not being included on first round discussions so a change was made so that occurs. Now they complain they are stuck in "all these non-technical meetings". My philosophy, let the customers\consumers\audience for the product to develop their needs and wants then engage the technical teams to determine feasibility.

Yes, I did take more offense than I should have, but here is the thing.

The customer service lady is really the only other stakeholder that I work with on this project. Because she talks to the customers and knows what they dont like about B1, she has provided a lot of the input I needed for B2. The problem is that, because of her experience with B1, she doesnt want to get involved with B1. So she hasnt been doing the testing she should have.

In the meeting on Thursday, she and the CEO decide that the look and feel of the reports, with regards to colours, is wrong and needs to be fixed, and that it needs to be fixed by an outside person because I am "too busy". Friday, she prints out the reports to look at them. Yes, they called this other guy not really having looked at the reports. So this guy who works at a consultancy comes in on Friday morning, and he says he has been misinformed - the reports are written in C# using itextsharp, while he was told to expert SQL Server Reporting Services. Again, this is why you need a technical resource present at these meetings, but anyway. The customer service lady still wants to go ahead, and his estimate is that it will take 6 weeks, because the reports need to be developed from scratch again in SSRS, even if he uses our stored procedures which will make life easier. We were supposed to launch end of May, now it will be end of June. He says he will get back to us with a formal quote by Tuesday. Notice, at this point, we still dont know what is wrong with the list. There is no list of problems, only a vague "look and feel isnt right".

Sorry Man get a new job that's all I can say.No one can work like that.

The stuff you quoted... I dont think all of it is accurate. I dont think the potential CTO is a personal friend of the CEO. Lets just say that I have realized that the colleague that gave me that information is perhaps not as reliable as I thought.

But in any case, the CEO mentioned this CTO business to us on Friday, mentioning the skills that the CTO would be bringing. And I thought to myself, its not that the company entirely lacks those skills, its that the CEO doesnt bother to ask resources who have those skills for advice. I'm the developer with the least amount of experience on the team, and I have 6 years of experience.

There really should be a head of development, because I dont feel the CEO should ever be involved in things like this. To my mind, this is too low level, although arguably it is a very small company, only 26 people. The head of development should make reporting decisions, and ideally they should be made such that they dont need to be changed at the last minute.

I also realized that one of the many problems with this entire project is that I only found out who the owner of this project is on Friday. He has not really got involved in this project.

 

[Jaydip]

"I also realized that one of the many problems with this entire project is that I only found out who the owner of this project is on Friday. He has not really got involved in this project."

This is a recipe for catastrophe.CTO brings technology leadership and from my understanding you guys don't lack technologial competency at all.Can you recommend some good project management books to your CEO?

 

[Ancalagon44]

I think we still need more technical resources, but yes, our biggest shortcoming by far is project management and leadership.

I've raised some of these concerns with the second in command, who seems to understand them better than our CEO. I'm hoping he can help.

I also think, a lot of people in the company think of technology as a black box. Input in the form of product requirements go in, technological stuff happens, and then sales pipes the output to customers. To my mind, because we are a technology company, everyone, sales included, should be inside that black box. Not just technical staff.

What can I do? I've tried to do as much project management type stuff as I can, but remember, I'm also only a contractor. Also, even if I could lead in some fashion, I'm the newest and most inexperienced member of the team. Even if I would make a good product owner/manager, promoting me over my co workers would probably make them quit. The HR guy said he doesnt really think any of my co workers are CTO material, hence the need to find someone from outside, which also has its problems.