And most of the time, this is absolutely correct. I mean, given that extra £100K we asked for, given the extension on the project, given the physical redundancy that we asked for 'last year' or the magic document which would have clarified the situation, we wouldn't be in this mess.
But we need to stop and think carefully about why this didn't happen.
The benefit of hindsight is fantastic but I reckon it also depends on one key thing: forgetfulness. The ability to forget, or dismiss what actually happened a while back which made us choose not to do something, to choose to spend less, to avoid the production of a document. With these two skills: hindsight and forgetfulness we put ourselves in another world - it certainly isn't the real world!
The benefit of hindsight is fantastic but I reckon it also depends on one key thing: forgetfulness. The ability to forget, or dismiss what actually happened a while back which made us choose not to do something, to choose to spend less, to avoid the production of a document. With these two skills: hindsight and forgetfulness we put ourselves in another world - it certainly isn't the real world!
We did things (or didn't do things) for a reason, and it's likely that the reason still exists today. Lack of funds, lack of time, apathy, too much work, a management focus on the irrelevant but 'easy to measure' things, it doesn't matter. But we have to recognise that these things are important - and that walking out of that meeting citing a root cause, normally where none of the participants are culpable I might add, is rarely a successful outcome.
We need to learn that we live in an imperfect world and we need to stop congratulating ourselves when we hold aloft a solution which we all know in our heart of hearts will never materialise. This is the only way we'll really change and we'll really prevent the situation from happening again.
If we know that there is huge pressure to deliver, and we often build solutions which are fragile but 'do the job' then don't all nod when some bright spark suggests that we change our ways and start building architecturally perfect solutions unless someone is going to go out and talk to your customers about adding 10% to their invoice. Without the latter, the former won't happen.
If we know that our teams are inexperienced in BizTalk, don't all agree that we need to build expertise so we can implement it unless someone is going to actually go get the budget for some training, or to hire in experts. If we don't fix the knowledge problem, there's no point building your future on BizTalk.
Get real - understand your weaknesses and either sort them out or stop pretending they don't exist.
We need to learn that we live in an imperfect world and we need to stop congratulating ourselves when we hold aloft a solution which we all know in our heart of hearts will never materialise. This is the only way we'll really change and we'll really prevent the situation from happening again.
If we know that there is huge pressure to deliver, and we often build solutions which are fragile but 'do the job' then don't all nod when some bright spark suggests that we change our ways and start building architecturally perfect solutions unless someone is going to go out and talk to your customers about adding 10% to their invoice. Without the latter, the former won't happen.
If we know that our teams are inexperienced in BizTalk, don't all agree that we need to build expertise so we can implement it unless someone is going to actually go get the budget for some training, or to hire in experts. If we don't fix the knowledge problem, there's no point building your future on BizTalk.
Get real - understand your weaknesses and either sort them out or stop pretending they don't exist.
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