of the projects that Greg asked me to work on was a response to a Request for Proposals (RFP) from a customer seeking our advice on how to build an application to address one of their business needs. Within the RFP they stated that we need to provide descriptions of the standard practices we use and explain how our standard practices align with industry best practices. I talked with Greg about this and expressed my concerns. First, we do not have consistency in our approach to projects. I put together recommendations for metrics but Vijay does not want them implemented. I put together recommendations for organizational structures on our project teams but Greg has not implemented it elsewhere. I created a prototype portal for project status updates but neither Vijay nor Greg supported that effort. So I asked Greg to write the section of our response document that explains our best practices and our alignment with industry recommendations. As he struggled with that task he realized that we have a long ways to go. Together, however, we came up with a suitable answer that described our lack of process as a flexible approach to meeting customer needs.
After we submitted that RFP I talked with Greg about the process. Greg reminded me that most of the people in most of the companies that have best practices do not actually follow their own guidelines. His point is that it is better to not adopt policies that we will not use than to burden people with processes that do not work. There is merit in that approach. When I work in Luke's office I am surrounded by a project team from one of our competitors. They have highly standardized processes and they are a CMM Level 5 software development shop. As I listen, however, what I hear is continual conversations about how to make what they are actually doing look like it fits in their process documents. They have best practices but what they do is no different than what we do. They just package it to look like they follow their process.
It turned out that our words about being flexible worked better than did this competitor's response to that same RFP. That customer does not have standardized processes and they did not want someone coming in and telling them how to run their shop. Thus our description of "flexibility" was actually the type of response they wanted.
With that task finished, Greg asked me to next write a response to another RFP. This customer, however, specifically states in their RFP that we must give them screen images from our project management portal. I asked Greg for his advice on how to deal with that requirement. Greg sent our sales team on site to meet with the customer and get more information. The results were ambiguous. The sales lead came away from that meeting convinced that the portal was not going to be that important. Still, I had to leave that section in our response blank because we do not have a portal. As the deadline loomed Greg became more anxious about that gap. But before it reached a crisis, the customer retracted their RFP and cancelled the project.
I talked with Greg and reminded him that sooner or later we are going to need to catch up with our competitors. Sooner or later we will be squeezed out of this business if we do not implement best practices. This last RFP convinced Greg that we must act. We talked about options and then Greg set up a conference call with Ram, the manager of our offshore programming team.
Ram had been waiting for this opportunity. He has contacts who can come in and arrange for us to be certified with CMMI or ISO. He already negotiated discounts with those firms. All he was waiting for was authorization to act. Ram assured us that we will be CMMI certified by the end of the year. I probed. First, how will Ram get Vijay to agree? Ram assured me that Vijay can continue to do as he wants and we will still be certified. Next I asked how certification will help us respond to an RFP that asks for a description of our project status portal. Ram assured me that the portal is not important. I probed on a few additional points and then we closed the call.
I asked Greg how it is possible to be certified as a best practices vendor without changing the way we do business. Greg explained that those certifications are just a business transaction and for the right sum of money we can achieve certification in whatever we need. I said that to me best practices are a journey. I described my friend Manny. Manny knew he was dying and yet Manny took on the studies to become a Project Management Professional (PMP). Manny only had a few months to live and yet he volunteered to help others pass their PMP test. Manny strived to do better and better and understood that the journey was the goal.
This is what best practices are all about. Best practices are a tool that helps us grow. First, our species had to evolve physically. Then we needed to mature mentally. Now we are evolving our social constructs. Within IT we begin with personal knowledge. Then we document that knowledge so that it is shared. Next we form a community. The resulting social structure is greater than any individual.
I explained that it is not the obtainment of a certification that changes the company, it is the process. During the journey people learn to work together. They learn to align their individual efforts to the corporate goals. It is not the certificate that changes the company; it is the journey that changes the people.
Then I returned to the disconnect between standardization and the entrepreneurial approach that Vijay likes. What I see is that the journey is also a selection process. The people that enjoy the journey put in the work that it takes to achieve the results. The people that do not want to change then self-select themselves out of the company.
The deeper I go into this search for best practices the more I return to a search for meaning. More and more I am realizing that all of this is a façade. Companies want certificates without effort. People want to claim best practices without changing any of their own behaviors. But even those generalizations are too granular. What I see now is that "humanity" is on a journey. Humanity is now striving to construct a social order that works. Best practices are just a tiny part of a mammoth whole.
Consider the longitudinal study captured in the Christian Bible. Adam and Eve were concerned about themselves and did not share responsibility for their actions. Joseph took the concept of family and enlarged it to join many households into one nation. Moses separated the us from the them and displayed developmental level three. The prophets described the actions of foreign nations as part of God's grand plan to shape the nations of Israel and Judah and gave us a vision of developmental level four. Jesus took the Jewish holy words and began to share them with people from other nations. And in the final book in the Christian Bible we hear that the acts of all the peoples of the world are part of God's massive plan to create a new society. The Bible contains a longitudinal study that describes the evolution of our social constructs.
Perhaps this is what Martin Buber meant when he wrote:
“Meeting with God does not come to man in order that he may concern himself with God, but in order that he may confirm there is meaning in the world. All revelation is summons and sending. God remains present to you when you have been sent forth; he who goes on a mission has always God before him: the truer the fulfillment the stronger and more constant His nearness.” (Martin Buber and Ronald Smith)
I still find those words cryptic, but I sense that I understand them. Kramer and Gawlick say that the core of Buber's philosophy hinges on the first chapter in Genesis:
“In Buber’s mind, Adam mistook God’s original intention in creation. Adam didn’t realize that he had to work toward perfecting the image of God placed inside him. Buber came to recognize in these verses (Genesis 1:26-27) his life purpose. And not just his alone. He understood this to be the task of all people who recognize God’s address to them. The task is to become a partner with God in creation.”
“First we must cut away our mind-forged perceptions of God, what Buber calls in Philosophical Interrogations our ‘passionate devotion to a fantasy image that one regards as God’. In a book of essays, Israel and the World, Buber writes that we enter a creative partnership with God by ‘imitating God,’ by ‘cleaving to God’s ways,’ and not by constructing God from our imaginations.” (Kenneth Paul Kramer with Mechthild Gawlick)
We construct all "real
ity" in our minds. We decide that best practices work or do not work and then we resist evidence that conflicts with our preconceptions. Vijay resists metrics. Ram knows that certifications can be acquired. Manny looked at life as a journey that he could only enjoy briefly. I look at all of this as an opportunity to make this a better world. I look at all efforts to achieve best practices as a small drop in an ocean of socially constructs. Together we are creating a new social order. To me, it no longer matters if Ram buys certification in best practices or if Greg ever adopts my recommendations. Best practices will happen. Those who swim with that tidal wave will thrive. Those who fight the current will drown.
Seeking the Sixth Deliverable
The sixth deliverable was the most complex. We spent a couple months on a proof of concept project and then we negotiated an addendum to our contract to fund two more resources. We proposed to do some of the work offshore but Luke wanted one additional person to be local. We gave him the pricing for that type of work and he offered to pay for one-half of one salary. We offered to bring someone on-site to work half time with the understanding
Workplace Ecology: A Case Study in Project Management Page 9