A member of a PM discord server recently shared their frustration over the organization he worked for losing their collective shit over a schedule estimate.
You see, the developers only provide t-shirt size estimates to the business. The dev team, internally, then uses story pointing. As a lot of PMs will attest, the executives don’t want to hear that this work is an XL task, they want to hear it’ll take us 47 days to tackle this work.
So off to the internet our hero went, to find a strategy to convert t-shirt sizing to a date estimate. What he found was a spreadsheet that was designed to “get you on the green, not necessarily in the hole.” The PM played with it a bit, utilized past work to verify that the document was somewhat accurate and confirmed that, yeah, surprisingly, it was pretty close to accurate.
He plugged the work into the sheet, and the value that was returned was significantly higher than what leadership kept claiming it was going to take. The leadership kept saying, yeah, 3-6 months, in, out, done. However, when plugging in the work needed to complete the project objectives, the time frame came out to be one year.
He got Guantanamo Bay levels of interrogated by leadership. The accusation from leadership is that he was using a tool that wasn’t approved by the company (even though it was downloaded onto his computer and wasn’t connected to the internet, so there shouldn’t have been any concern that he was leaking private information).
Similar stories were shared from other PMs.
“We needed a better way to track risks, so I downloaded an RPN graph, and got in serious trouble because we ‘didn’t own the document’ and therefore were subject to the website changing the document without our knowledge, even though I was using a downloaded copy.”
“I started working for a small startup that was in the fledgling stages of setting up a PMO. There was no formal set of document templates in use, so I downloaded an entire portfolio worth of common templates. The CEO didn’t mind most of them but went absolutely mental over the BRD (business requirements document). He didn’t like that it captured business drivers and detailed information about current processes. ‘What if someone were to get their hands on this document? It could bankrupt us.’ We ended up not using any of the templates I downloaded because of this. He wanted us to create our own internal documents so that we controlled what we captured. My “mistake” led to my unceremonious firing, as I could no longer be trusted with company secrets.”
“Got disciplined for asking Reddit a question (and) using their feedback to build a Jira ticket template. It ‘demonstrated an egregious lack of judgement.’ My boss had me redo the discovery work for the Jira template which ended up being identical to what was suggested by Reddit. Never got an apology.”
Well, Who Owns This?
One phrase came up over and over in the discussions; who owns this?
For the PMs, most of them argued that it was created by someone, shared on a reputable PM resource site, and downloaded with a free-use license. The owner would be the company, because that’s how the license works… what’s not to get? I download it, we can use it.
Well…
The issue seems to be that executives and project teams are speaking a different language. As someone who has sat in many board room meetings, I’m here to tell you, when someone in the business asks who owns a document, what they want to know is who is responsible for the creation and updating of the document.
They see templates as a living document.
The issue with that is that it isn’t a living document. Not in the way they think it is. Living documents are documents that get updated regularly. The data is meant to be kept updated and information is changed at the need of the business. Templates entire job is consistency. It’s meant to display the information in a consistent way to make parsing the data fucking easier. Yes, you need to revisit the templates from time to time to ensure that you’re capturing everything that needs to be captured, but by and large, they are meant to stay the same throughout their usage.
Therefore, when executives hear that someone outside of the organization created the document, and that the downloader is the one who reviewed and updated the template, what they are hearing is that no one owns the document. There isn’t any one person or team that was identified: therefore, it’s a rogue document.
Why is this Bullshit?
The original poster went on to ask about who owns the document with the company logo on it. The one that is used for all communication. The leadership said no one, because it’s not a living document. There is no data in it, so there is no need to have an owner. It’s just a letterhead. He argued that the PMO templates were the same thing. Consider the letterhead as a blank template for communication. The RPN graph was a blank template for recording risks.
The retort? It’s totally different, and if you don’t understand that, you’re just a dumbass.
The solution for most was to tell a half-truth. Yes, the template will be reviewed regularly, but by regularly, we mean only when we are reviewing the team procedures.
Even with a half-truth, however, many will still receive pushback on using templates downloaded off the internet because…
Info Sec Teams Need to Seriously Calm the Fuck Down
Early in my career I leveraged Google Scholar a lot. I was trying to make changes to what was a super shitty organization, and I needed something to back up my arguments. Info Sec eventually blocked Google Scholar because it hadn’t been vetted, and they saw I had downloaded a lot of documents off the site.
More recently, Info Sec blocked AMP Project links while using their Wi-Fi, because it was a source for potential hijacking and ransomware. The block wasn't just for AMP project links; however, it extended to any site that an AMP Project link was trying to open. So, we lost a lot of valuable sites, because someone one time tried to open a link from their cell phone. A client I worked with last year had a security block on all email (outgoing and incoming) that had an attachment. This block would hold the email for 24 hours. It performed virus scans; it searched the documents for anything potentially illegal and ran a check to determine if there was any leak of company secrets. Communicating with them required complex work arounds. Even with the workarounds, communication was frequently delayed, which caused significant headaches and schedule overruns.
A few respondents mentioned getting all of their templates off of projectmanager.com, and even though it is a highly respected site, their Info Sec team still blocked the use of the templates, because they could be loaded with trojans, ransomware, and/or data miners.
I’ve had people cite the theft of millions of medical records, because of a rogue macro in an excel spreadsheet as proof that you can’t trust any document that you didn’t yourself create. But this vulnerability was patched. In fact, there are a ton of safety measures built into these office products to mitigate these types of attacks from occurring. And there are further things that can be done to prevent them based on organizational policy, like blocking macros and VBA scripts.
The biggest security risk is, and has always been, some moron giving out their username and password to a malicious actor. The problem is social engineering.
What do We Care?
The OP mentioned that in the meeting he had with leadership, he flat out said that he would no longer be providing templates. If they wanted a template, then they would need someone to create it for them. Otherwise, they’ll just continue to use the approved templates that currently exist.
A handful of people agreed with him. Finding the right template takes time and energy. Why would you put in the effort if you’re just going to get hit with managers and directors in full fucking riot gear? Worse still, is losing your job over someone thinking that downloading templates is a mistake. Or getting written up for an “egregious lack of judgement. Or being made to feel like your efforts are not appreciated.
Fuck ‘em.
The problem, in my opinion, goes way, way, way passed just not using some template you downloaded form a website. I am a huge proponent of continuous improvement. It’s my specialty. It’s why many consider me an asshole, I’m really good at spotting deficiencies and finding a way to fix them. When you attack those for trying to improve processes, including introducing some standardization to the process, you are telling those working for you that you don’t care about improvement, and that looking to improve is a waste of time and energy.
Former contributor Christina spoke a lot about the psychological need for employees to feel like they are making a difference, contributing, and that those contributions are valuable. The leadership represented in this article are basically saying fuck your need to be a contributing member of the team. Why would you put up with that?
A new hire told me that he left his previous position because the Senior VP told him that just because he got his PMP, didn’t mean that he suddenly knew more than everyone. This was in response to the suggestion that they create a project charter for all these huge organization wide projects that were coming down.
This is why we care. It fucking sucks; it’s shitty behavior. Especially, when it’s something as simple as using a template. It’s something that is so small but would have significant impact on the day to day, and it’s met with hostility and vitriol.
Is It Just Me, Or Is It Getting Worse?
When we started out as a simple email newsletter sharing stories of the weird and wacky world of business, the overwhelming majority of responses we got were “shit, I’m glad my company doesn’t work that way.”
Now, 5-6 years later (fucking hell, we’ve been at this too long), the slight majority of stories are people echoing similar experiences they have in their companies. It’s a toxic organizational culture that is spreading like a fast-moving virus.
In the past, I would have suggested that you, dear reader, move on, find a new job, leave the shittiness behind. Considering that the culture seems to be spreading, however, I think it’s time to say fuck it. It’s not your job to be shat upon. Your company doesn’t want to improve, leadership doesn’t want to make processes better, executives don’t see the benefit of your efforts… fuck ‘em.
Seriously, fuck ‘em.
It’s not worth your time; it’s not worth fighting; it’s not worth the headache and stress.
Defeatist? Maybe. Prioritizing your own mental wellbeing? Definitely.
But what if what I see is a way to save the company a lot of money? It’s not your money, fuck ‘em.
What if I see that our shitty practices are delaying projects? It’s not your time being wasted, fuck ‘em.
What if what I’m seeing will plug a potential gap in documentation, saving us from litigation? You’re not paying the lawyers, fuck ‘em.
What if I see that the company’s bad decisions are leading us towards bankruptcy? There are other jobs, fuck ‘em.
You’re not being paid to be a hero or a savior, forget what you know. Eventually, when enough people stop covering up for the fuck-ups of those higher up, organizations and shareholders alike will have to acknowledge that the people running these companies are total fuck-ups, and the only thing keeping the wheels moving are the people running things down below.
A Note: The company headed towards bankruptcy is a (somewhat) true story. A portfolio manager at a company noticed that the company was losing a few million dollars a year based on really bad business practices (basically throwing money at services to fix problems, rather than actually addressing them). This is something that had been raised by the project team for a couple of years, but they finally had evidence that the problem was serious. When he approached the CEO with what he found, he was told to “leave the business managing to me, and I’ll leave the portfolio managing to you.” About year later the company defaulted on their loans, and went shit up.
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