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Continued from Part 2 which can be found here -> Part 2

I look over at Crème, who is now staring out the window watching the rain. I cough, theatrically, for effect. “So, Crème, would you like a rest, or do you want to tell us about what happened next?”

“Oh, yes” Crème says, “Sorry, I was wandering there for a while”. She continues.

“Well, for the first couple of months everything was swimmingly fine. Hunky dory, as they say. A lot of people were coming and going; lots of intangible expectation in the air. We had lots and lots of meetings, interviews, presentations, strategic planning sessions, breakout groups, executive forums, brown bag sessions and meet and greets. We were on a roll, we were on top of the world, and nothing could stop us. Then by chance I met an old colleague of mine at a party. He had been the Information Management manager for me before I had brought in the external company, and he asked me how things were going”.

“That was the very first time that I actually realised I had lost control of the situation, not only control, but I didn’t even have a clear holistic view of what was going on and it was like people were speaking a foreign language that I recognised but could no longer understand”.

“The next day I call up the senior account executive and voice my concerns. I tell him that I need to get a good overall view of what is going on, that I am seeing lots of activity and a lot of potential work being shipped out, but I’m not seeing any results, any tangibles, and any deliverables”.

“Well, the powers that be at Bogartsys (‘the most cunning IT Service Company in the world’ according to the highly esteemed Bloomer and Johnson Report) decide to humour me, to entertain me, to dazzle me with their guile, brilliance, intelligence and wit; or, better said, in the absence of any of that, to use some of the income they received from my company to delicately compromise my professional integrity. Well, the upshot is that they invite me out to their international headquarters in someplace far away – it’s not important where – with everybody happy to see me, telling me not to worry, that everything would be okay, that I just needed to relax and slowly get up to speed on progress, because there was just so much for one person to assimilate. So being a sucker, I went”.

“When I am there again it’s all garlands, smiles and deception. I get the same seven-star procedure, the same weasel words, the same falseness and mendacity. The same total brainwashing deluxe. Treated like a princess. I was wined, dined and groomed, and thoroughly suckered into the bargain”.

“I get back to the ranch, and things continue as before, albeit with additional management reports, presentations, workshops, and conference calls and daily stand-up meetings. I genuinely feel that things are heading in a better direction; albeit slowly”.

“Again after a couple of months I noticed that nothing tangible had been delivered, I still didn’t have a clear view of progress, and now the business users were getting very nervous and very agitated. So, again I kick up a rumpus with the Bogartsys guys”.

“What the hell are you people up to? What are you doing with all the money we are paying you? You are taking tens of millions from us, you have hundreds of people supposedly assigned to this programme, and there’s not a damn thing to show for it”.

“It’s at this point that I start to realise that when these clowns talked about iterative methods and agile approaches, what they actually meant was that they would fool me iteratively, and be extremely agile in the way they conned me. In short, I was being taken for a ride, the business was being taken for a ride, and I couldn’t work out a coherent way to stop the madness”.

“Well, things finally came to a head, and the CFO and CEO demand a meeting with the top dogs at The Taffia Connection”.

Part 4 (final part) can be found here -> Part 4

Many thanks for reading.

File under: Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Richard Jones, Martyn Jones, Cambriano Energy, Iniciativa Consulting, Iniciativa para Data Warehouse, Tiki Taka Pro