Re: Introductions

> Hi Mike,
>
>  > I currently work as a contractor in IT for a public
> utility in
>  > Columbus that has quite a bit of resistance. I am
> trying to
>  > decide how much effort to put into improving my
> workplace.
> That sounds like an interesting decision.  What factors
> are  nudging you to lean toward more effort?  Toward less?
>
> What are people resisting?  Can you give an example or two
> of the  resistance?> Hi Mike,
>
>  > I currently work as a contractor in IT for a public
> utility in
>  > Columbus that has quite a bit of resistance. I am
> trying to
>  > decide how much effort to put into improving my
> workplace.
> That sounds like an interesting decision.  What factors
> are  nudging you to lean toward more effort?  Toward less?

I'll start with the less effort. My wife will be finishing
medical school in just over a year. With the way the
residency process works in the US, we will be finding out in
March where we will need to be in June. Because of this, I
know I will be finding a new job at that time. This makes my
current employer a short time job. I took this position
because I knew that I would be able to expend very little
effort which gives me more time for school.

As far as putting in more effort, I get very frustrated with
inneficient, tedious processes. My employer is trying to
reduce costs and increase efficiency in their operations.
Both of these things would be incredibly easy to do, but
there is a lot of resistance. The project I am on was run by
5 employees of this company, 15 Accenture consultants and 30
local contractors of which I am one. The 5 employees have
done very little to keep there technical skill up to date,
and seem to have been put in the position of "Architect"
because they don't have the people skills to manage people.
The accenture consultants did a great job of understanding
the business, but knew very little about writing software.
The end result is a project that was 1 year late and
15million over budget. I have previously completed an
extremely similar project for $300,000 in 6 months. I know
that I have the experienceto improve this project, but I
don't know if I have the desire to spend the necessary time.

> What are people resisting?  Can you give an example or two
> of the  resistance?

Many general suggestions receive great resistance. Most of
the suggestions are relatively minor, such as replacing
large amounts of duplicated code with generic code,
parellelizing a process for improved performance, or trying
to streamline a development process that currently makes it
easier to do things in an emergence mode than in a planned
mode. People agree that the problems these suggestions solve
are problems that need to be solved, but there is great
resistance to making any change. I believe that this is
firmly ingrained in the culture of this organization.
Nevertheless, I find it quite frustrating.

To make matters worse, I have a poor reputation at this
company. I came from a very fast paced environment where
directness was valued. I carried this communication style
with me to a much more indirect environment. I am still
working on rebuilding relationships more than a year later.
If nothing else, I am making progess inn this regard.
>
> Dale
>

Mike

> --
> Web:    http://www.dhemery.com
> Weblog: http://www.dhemery.com/journal (Conversations with
> Dale)
>
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