"But the CTO Said..."

I spent part of last week cleaning up a few messes caused by the overuse of the "Authority" game played on the unsuspecting to drive home a particular viewpoint on requirements, design, and technology mandates.

In this particular case, the authority figure is this organization's Chief Technology Officer. He is a good guy and very knowledgeable. However, he suffers from two problems: a) every word that comes out of his mouth in meetings is taken as gospel by individuals with enormous potential for misunderstanding him and screwing things up further; and b) when he does document standards and mandates, he uses too much politically correct or wishy-washy prose that masks his intent to the point that the mandates can be interpreted in many different ways. Which, in practice, they usually are.

The radar of the politically astute in this business' IT division picked up on this instantly. Almost every technical and architectural discussion included "But the CTO said this..." Or wanted that. Or we have to run it by him for approval, including some development work where the effort involved can be measured in hours or a few days.

The kicker to all this came last week, when I was faced with the prospect of having to design and oversee the prototype development of a basic SOA that would pull data from various systems on demand from a behind-schedule and mission-critical customer billing system. The organization had a toolset that appeared appropriate to quickly implement a straw-man system that could be refined later as time and funds permitted. I felt that after an admittedly cursory examination of the capabilities of the toolset that it would be worth trying out on this short project. The toolset's main proponent assured me multiple times that using it in this manner was 'fully approved' by the CTO.

The next day, a manager in my client organization informed me that he mentioned my use of this toolset to the CTO in a meeting - and it was the first time the CTO had heard about it. The idea was also promptly quashed and replaced by what appears to be slow, laborious, and largely worthless overanalysis and process that isn't going to solve the billing system's issues with respect to technical detail and timing. But that's their problem, not mine.

However, what will be happening going forward is that I will no longer take anyone's word that anything is 'approved by the CTO' (or for that matter, 'approved' by anyone) unless: a) I see it in writing from him; or b) he tells me himself. The lesson here is clear: if you are going to 'mandate' and 'approve' technology and technical approaches in your organization (regardless of how ill-advised that may be, but that's not the point I'm making here), you'd better make sure that people know about it.

Directly from you, in detail, and not from your minions, sycophants, and the politically astute.

Comments

[panasianbiz.com]

This is the kind of unfortunate situation that happens all too often in this somewhat overly competitive economy of ours. I think getting any kind of "ok" in writing is always a good idea and making sure a "cc" goes to someone else also helps!