Planning all begins with an understanding of the requirements, constraints, and assumptions. At least that’s what the textbook would say about project planning. So what happens when a project is started without these? What happens if all that is understood are actually assumptions? The planning steps can be some of the most vital steps for a Project Manager but sadly, these steps are not always capable of being accomplished which will likely eventually lead to the same outcome, mass chaos and several revisions.
In 2017 I was asked to come in as an intern and start my paralegal career. My prospective employer at the time seemed very promising and I looked forward to the opportunity to learn. Upon sitting down for my interview I was asked a very peculiar question, “Do you have any IT background?” While this was something I was very used to hearing after being in Air Force IT or corporate IT for nearly a decade, at the time this struck me as odd when I was coming in to be a paralegal intern. Of course I replied honestly and stated my background in IT to then learn from my prospective employer that implementing a new contract management system. This seemed very exciting because this was something that could mix both my IT, criminal justice, and paralegal backgrounds so I heartily accepted the challenge. My project lead? A seasoned attorney who apparently had some technical background. He would give instruction and be the liaison between us and the attorneys who were making the decisions about what they needed in the system.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Mike Tyson
When the implementation began, it seemed promising but then I noticed how much our approach became haphazard or waiting to be told something was needed before it was discussed. I quickly learned that our attorneys had little to no technical background and that they had barely been inside the new platform to know its capabilities or how it functioned. My supervising attorney and I got to work building a system which started out on a very rough footing. How does the old saying go? Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth? While my punch would be a figurative punch to the gut (several times I might add) it would still throw all plans and cautions to the wind and make way for mass chaos which would eventually lead to a massive overhaul of a system barely out of its infancy stages.
After being with my new employer merely six months, I found out that the supervising attorney, who was only there to set up this new contract management system, would be leaving as the company only budgeted for him to stay on for six months believing this to be enough. Having my background from military projects and roll-outs, I knew this would go completely sideways if a key player stepped out within a year of this projects start. After all, we had barely gotten this out to our regional centers for testing. I then got my first figurative shot to the mouth, I was told that not only was he leaving, the attorneys wanted me to take over management and development of the system from here on. My paralegal duties were supposed to be a 50:50 split but how often have we heard that only to have our workload become 90:90? Still, I did the best with what I could and agreed to help any way that I could. Then came the second punch.
I quickly discovered my former counterpart took numerous shortcuts and the “planning” he had done to integrate the system, was barely equivalent to a post-it note. I then decided I needed an urgent meeting with the attorneys to not only inform them of the status of the project’s disarray but also to ask what direction they needed me to go in to get it back on track. This is where all of those lessons on planning should be useful but when you have a complete lack of planning, you quickly realize that the outcome is sheer chaos. Discussing it with the attorneys, I learned that every attorney wanted a different direction, few actually were being held accountable for actively using the system due to “not liking it” and even fewer knew what the system could actually do. Our entire planning and testing sessions up to this point, were completely fruitless.
What resulted was a series of discussions between myself and the attorneys which taught me just how basic a project manager needs to lay it out. I would often be met with blank gazes and the ever to often “But can it be done?” question. Short story was that they had no idea what I was talking about and simply wanted a yes or a no on whether we could get from point A to B in the time they wanted. Well, as any good project manager knows, management needs to be involved or you will be doomed to repeat, repeat, and repeat again the same steps and hope for a different outcome. Eventually, the attorneys became more and more familiar with the system and began making very valuable commentary and suggestions for improvement which I could then turn into actual results for them. After nearly a year of working on this system, it did however become readily apparent that it would desperately need a complete overhaul to give them everything they were looking for.
Since there was so little planning initially and everything was added in a haphazard fashion, the new system became inundated with so many unnecessary things that made it too complicated for your average user to determine what they should do based on what they needed. I then started a plan to overhaul the system and give it the direction it needed based on nearly three months of discussion and planning with the attorneys. Everything looked like it was finally in order but then the knockout punch came, I had only a matter of weeks left at work before I would need to step out on medical leave. Now, I had to cram everything I could into those weeks that I could while balancing out medical appointments and such that were vitally important. On my last day, I was able to finish the design and have it ready for roll out only to find out, no one else but me knew how to roll it out. Everyone knew how to use it but this IT team was a single point of failure. I ended up stepping out on medical leave and found out later that they had to bring the vendor back in to completely overhaul the system while I was out.
Lessons of the day? While people might be anxious to get into the meat of the project, if you don’t do the tedious planning before you begin then you might very well end up re-doing all your work and then some. Sometimes you might not even have the time you need to re-do the work before you have to move on to something else or moving to a new employer.
“Project planning must be systematic, flexible enough to handle unique activities, disciplined through review and controls, and capable of accepting multi-functional inputs.”
Harold Kerzner
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