I realized today that my current project is unfolding a lot like a software project I managed nearly ten years ago. In 1997 and 1998, I led an interactive multimedia training software for a client - BellSouth. As we got ready for usability testing, things started to go awry. We ended up firing a vendor that I know was doing the best they could, but had bit off more than they could handle. We had several testing misfires, missed due dates, heated discussions, and finally delivered the project several months late.
I was struck today by the similarities bewtween that project and my current project, although my current project is on a much larger scale. The thing I am struggling with now is "what lessons did I take away from the experience ten years ago that I could apply to this situation?"
I'm not coming up with easy answers. Much about how things are playing out is influenced by our corporate culture, which puts quality, cost management and work/life balance over due dates. But with our second attempt at user acceptance testing fizzling even though my team was confident just last week, there are emerging patterns that are not familiar to me, and I don't have a response in my past experiences to use, despite the similarities to a previous project.
In the next couple of days, I'll have to determine how to move the team forward while working through the team's functional manager. I'll let you know what how it goes.
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