Man, it's been a week!
Once again, I had a meeting with two workers, two consultants, and three managers. What is happening to this place? And as you'd expect, the majority of the time was spent not talking about the issues, but rather what the goals were.
I knew what one manager thought the should be, and after talking to another for 5 minutes, it was very clear that his thoughts were the exact opposite. One wants the two of us to get the vendor's software and play with it to make sure that it'll do what we need. The other wants us to get the software, have it running alongside the existing application we have and then be able to compare and contrast what's in the new vendor's product versus the old.
I can see the value in both, but they really do need to get together and make one decision: Who in this place is in charge of this thing?
There's no reason for all the managers. None. There's always going to be one that wins, anyway, there's an implicit pecking order, and while it may appear that they are equals as managers, they really aren't. So just fess up and and let the alpha manager take over. That's it.
The one that wanted the parallel system also wanted us to look into conversion strategies and testing verification schemes and all that. The one that just wanted a stamp of approval will want his people to figure all that out.
Interestingly, which is fine with me, the latter is the one that's going to win.
So rather than really do anything, we're simply going to get the software and play with it for a while and verify that it can do what we need. Then it's done, and the next phase will be a massive Project Plan with assignments, etc. and all the conversion docs and strategies, etc. Whatever. It's a paycheck.
I wish that hypno-therapist hadn't died in Office Space, I'd set up an appointment with him. Just ignore the management... this is just a paycheck...