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Making Changes to an IT Business?

Posted by Cliff on from the getting-TPB-to-listen-to-reason dept.

everythingeverything asks: "Recently the IT development company I work for has undergone many changes, mostly focused on the streamlining of the development teams. Three people have recently been laid off, and massive pressure is being exerted on myself and my colleagues to develop more efficiently and delivery bug-free code. This is great - very positive changes. However it's blatantly obvious to many of my workmates that the sales and accounts team are not meeting their end of the bargain. They consistently oversell our services, write incomplete and inaccurate project specifications, set deadlines and budgets without consulting a TA or a developer, and frequently give in to clients when they want to change the spec halfway through. Management have agreed that there are problems and we have given them detailed research and documented solutions, but nothing happens. How have other employees in similar organisations brought about an effective, non-hostile and mutually beneficial resolution to the problem?"

3 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. change the spec halfway through by HughsOnFirst · · Score: 5, Interesting

    >and frequently give in to clients when they
    want to change the spec halfway through.

    If they are smart they have a clause in the contract for a "change order"
    and bill for it.

    When I was freelancer , a poorly written spec and a change order clause
    was like the client forcing you to take extra money.

  2. A few suggestions by isj · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Have you considered that "give in to clients when they want to change the spec halfway through" may be part of their sales tactic, and that major changes is already in the budget for the project?

    In any case the best you can do personally is keep track of the resources spent implementing a project. This will enable the sales persons to better estimate how much a project should cost. It also enables you to provide much better estimates for future projects.

    This will of course not help right now, and it could be a bit delicate to point out that they have problems keeping the customers in line. Do you eat with them at lunchtime? If you do then drop a line like "uhhh... that new feature X in project X will take some time to implement"

  3. here's what i did... by pizza_milkshake · · Score: 4, Interesting
    the first company I worked for out of school a couple years ago was *gasp* a web shop. After struggling through about 6 months with major project management problems (none of the owners, who functioned as project managers, knew anything about project management), major development problems (floating specs, zero QA) the company brought in a consultant *groan* to help us iron out our problems.

    i actually really liked the consultant... probably because he ended up telling the owners what I'd been telling them for months (the obvious problems mentioned above). everyone was pretty pumped up for a change.

    three days later we were all called to a meeting where it was explained to us that "now that all our past problems have been solved...". i was baffled... we hadn't actually implemented anything the consultant had proposed, we merely talked about it. i stood up and said "I don't understand. What have we done to fix the stuff we've been talking about?" to which I got stares and bewilderment. Everyone was thinking the same thing (several folks told me afterwards), but I was the only one with the balls to actually say it.

    I was fired within a week for my "attitude problem".

    my point is -- real change is hard; 90% of folks would rather just talk about hard stuff than actually do it to improve their situation. don't settle for any Mickey Mouse shit. good luck! :)