It was a great journey
working with you and the team to design the solution … regret, unfortunately we
are unable to proceed with the engagement and would like to thank you for
offer; we wish you all the best in your future endeavors ! After
unsuccessfully attempting to shift the blame from himself, the CFO gave in and
agreed to recall the vendor and accept their last provided offer to move ahead.
It was a tumultuous ride that had culminated in the imbroglio the enterprise
found itself in with the vendor shortlisted by the business and IT. (see earlier post)
The delay had almost cost the business the early mover
advantage; they required the solution to be primed within a time window for
which they will now have to super stretch. Regulatory deadlines can be
unforgiving to business and the Business Head was thus on tenterhooks. He
sensed that the wounded ego will not take kindly to the decision; the scorned CFO
should have been his ally, after all they had a good working relationship in
the past; the CIO was a political outcast with his neutrality now going against
him.
With a letter of intent the project was kicked off, the
contracting took a while; each and every clause was scrutinized and fortified
to put the vendor in a precarious situation should the project suffer any kind
of deviation. To safeguard his interest, despite undue pressure the vendor did
not commit full resources until the paperwork was completed. The business team
watched the drama as it played out waiting to get started; the CIO continued to
counsel the vendor with a mix of pragmatism and spirit of the now fragile
partnership.
Starting on perceptibly shaky foundation, the project got
off to a fair start with all sides putting in the rigor required to make up
lost ground and deliver to promise; review meetings were used for course
correction as the steps taken were firm and steady thus covering the halfway
milestone with time to spare. The first process prototypes were approved for
build and the finishing line appeared to be within reach. Everyone was charged
and they were progressing in perfect unison, an example out of the textbooks on
project management.
Next review meeting had an uninvited yet powerful
participant who wanted a personal assessment of the good news that the project
reports were portraying. He tested the patience of the team with his questions
that attempted to elevate the highly improbable to highly likely even though it
did not make any sense to build for probability of events that may occur beyond
the six sigma. The system design not addressing the probable though not
possible kept recurring as a theme and he declared an emergency by the end of
the meeting.
No one had anticipated the CFOs active interest in the
project considering that after finalization of the contract they had not heard
anything from his offices. So the new found interest made everyone a bit
uncomfortable, wondering where it was headed. By the end of the meeting it was
evident that it was a blatant attempt to derail the project by challenging the
team credibility to have thought through the processes and design a solution
that addressed all use cases; the team went into a huddle to find a strategy to
overcome the new challenge.
The vendor provided referenceable material on global best
practices and how they had addressed similar scenarios in other markets; the
CIO reached out to the subject matter experts to list down occurrences of
exceptions over the history of the company rather than work on hypothesis of an
eventuality hitting them. All the material thus collated clearly vindicated the
stand the team had taken and the solution they had architected which appeared
to be adequate to counter the new threat to their project.
Such distractions they could do without and they could not
have taken on the CFO headlong; so they decided to use the CIOs connections to
get an external consultant – an acknowledged authority. As providence would
have it, the next meeting was the Steering Committee which had all
stakeholders. The Consultant gave an independent critical analysis of the
project pointing out a few observations where the team could improve outcomes.
The CEO applauded the audit report and endorsed the team to move with full
speed.
Contracts protect enterprises from external risks, how do we
stay protected from internal mischief ?
No comments:
Post a Comment