Of Deliverable Dreams
Having disturbed sleep is never fun, but sometimes what you dream of can can be entertaining... A recent rough night resulted in a rather bizarre dream (which in hindsight shows I really need a break from work / a holiday) whereby I was back at school being taught / quizzed over styles of work. Aside from the disorientation of waking up in the back row of a church building (odd as I've never been taught in a church), the four approaches being taught were remarkably relevant to my day-to-day:
Approach 1: The Lone Wolf
Something I have seen far too often (and something that I am sadly guilty of more often than not), the individual who can do it all but keeps everything in their head. Great for startups with too few staff / not enough time, but problematic as the company grows / should they walk in front of a bus.
Approach 2: Overcommit and Underdeliver
Flashbacks to my former employer here (at least the UK team). Promise the world and deliver past the deadline / at a higher cost / an incomplete solution / not what was asked for. Somehow this still happens, which honestly I don't know how companies get away with it.
Approach 3: Relying on Reputation
Also (painfully) familiar, relying on someone with a big reputation / comes highly recommended by others (but without supporting evidence). Everything seems good on paper, right until they start talking / start work. It's always fun to see a client look at you with the "WTF" face when the "expert" is detailing how things will be done. Better still when you go in blind and have been told to implement what they have designed (and realise learning quantum mechanics would have been less painful).
Approach 4: Nobody Likes Doing It Right
Has anyone ever seen this? Having the right team, the right scope, and delivering the right solution? Answers on a postcard please, as in all my years working in IT I've never encountered a client that is willing to scope / fund / populate a project to do it properly. Never enough staff, never enough budget, and never enough time. To quote a reference from my teenage years: Champagne tastes on a Lambrini budget.
With most companies having a constant focus on cutting costs / increasing profit / reducing timescales, approach 4 comes across as a pipe-dream I will never see in my lifetime. As for the other 3, my attempts to create an approach 5 are still in progress ;)
Moral of the story, I need to work less hours during the week/weekend (and dream about better things!)