I came here to use the best project management tools and prove that they work on projects like this. Vijay and Luke see no value in doing this. My life would be simplified if I just gave up as well. Fortunately I had lunch with my good friend Jim this weekend and he told me about a project that he just finished. He started out doing all the right project management stuff and hit resistance. The culture in that company devalued meeting minutes, project schedules and other simple tools. Jim decided to go along with the culture and then found that he had nothing to fall back on when his project ran late.

My friend Rick told me a very similar story. Rick began work in a new company that impressed him with their commitment to project management. He created minutes, used a project schedule and created a work breakdown structure to help define the requirements. Then he found that the while the company proclaimed their adoption of best practices the culture in that company was actually hostile towards documentation. Rick kept creating all those documents anyway, but he learned that it was best to not distribute them. Then Rick, like Jim, found another job where people understood the value in using those simple tools. I plan to do the same. I am going to continue to track expenditures and create my financial forecast. I am going to continue to use a project schedule and publish status reports even if no one reads them. And if Vijay continues to tell me to stop doing what I know is right then, like Jim and Rick, I am going to search for another job.

Another best practice is change management. Change management and configuration management are two disciplines shared by projects and operations. This company has a rigorous change management process, but they ignore it. Requirements are in constant flux. Rick, Jim and others have asked why my employer accepts fixed price contracts with no restrictions on scope. My response is that this is a natural reaction to the environment we inhabit. Every behavior that we choose is chosen for a purpose. Vijay put this proposal together and he is convinced that we will make a profit. The numbers show otherwise, but Vijay is content to ignore those numbers. Vijay, like many executives, has developed the ability to selectively hear only good news. And when there is bad news the fastest response is to shoot the messenger. I have worked for numerous companies that behaved exactly the same. Those companies see no advantage to best practices and they never will. Unless and until you see a clear distinction between where you are and where you can be there is no motivation to change. As long as all of the problems that arise are simply swept under the rug nothing will change. As long as we adopt the attitude that there is a linear causality between the person and the results then we are doomed. Consider Vijay's response to the problems on this project. He wants me to update a process document that no one uses. First, best practices are meaningless if all they are is paper sitting in a file cabinet. Second, this is a system. Pushing on Luke will not solve the problem unless we can also influence Kathy. We do not need more processes. What we need to do is follow the processes that have already been defined - starting with change management. Change management would allow us to manage the requirements. And if we could manage the requirements then we could deliver the right product.