Thursday, December 16, 2004
Hurry Up and Wait : How to Track Projects
The MTI (Melton Technologies) company Christmas party was held last week, with the initial appearance of being a company-wide meeting. (nothing quite like seeing Chuck sing away).
At one meeting, we discussed the need for a way of tracking upcoming projects with a "diary" or "due" date. That way, we'll be able to better track what's going on internally for customer service. For example, I have about 5 open POCs that are under development where companies have PAID for them. These need to have DUE dates.
This came to a head last week when Bunch's IDSC link wasn't ready in time for them and that then caused all kinds of headaches for everyone. Even though I managed to complete all their VME file conversions (glad that's off my plate now) , they pushed their VME implementation back to January 2005 - so I was pulled into the storm of "gotta get it done" when in fact, my time could have been spent better on other projects that ARE required before 2005.
Anyways, Roy is heading this up and even though suggestions were made to simply add a "Due Date" and a new project status in Track, no decision has been made on how this is going to transpire. (and since we don't have a "Due Date" feature, no one can really say when this is going to happen)
Everyone in the W-S seems to be talking about "CRM" but as far as I am concerned, that's a pipe-dream. There's no way you are going to get everyone on board on a single solution. We've tried it, it's failed - it's not worth the R&D on it. We've got a system that works and we should just keep on with it.
Everyone has too much on their plate to start with - so adding one new project to this list is simply a way for giving an excuse when other things start to fall off.
At one meeting, we discussed the need for a way of tracking upcoming projects with a "diary" or "due" date. That way, we'll be able to better track what's going on internally for customer service. For example, I have about 5 open POCs that are under development where companies have PAID for them. These need to have DUE dates.
This came to a head last week when Bunch's IDSC link wasn't ready in time for them and that then caused all kinds of headaches for everyone. Even though I managed to complete all their VME file conversions (glad that's off my plate now) , they pushed their VME implementation back to January 2005 - so I was pulled into the storm of "gotta get it done" when in fact, my time could have been spent better on other projects that ARE required before 2005.
Anyways, Roy is heading this up and even though suggestions were made to simply add a "Due Date" and a new project status in Track, no decision has been made on how this is going to transpire. (and since we don't have a "Due Date" feature, no one can really say when this is going to happen)
Everyone in the W-S seems to be talking about "CRM" but as far as I am concerned, that's a pipe-dream. There's no way you are going to get everyone on board on a single solution. We've tried it, it's failed - it's not worth the R&D on it. We've got a system that works and we should just keep on with it.
Everyone has too much on their plate to start with - so adding one new project to this list is simply a way for giving an excuse when other things start to fall off.
