How To Attach A Laser To A Shark’s Head

 

“I have one simple request, and that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.”  --Dr. Evil, Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, 1997.

The comic villain from the Austin Powers movies, Dr. Evil (brilliantly played by Mike Meyers), heads a massive organization set on (a) destroying the Earth with purloined nuclear weapons, (b) destroying the Earth with a moon-based laser beam, and/or (c) using a tractor beam to pull a meteor into the Earth, presumably resulting in its destruction. Fortunately, the world is spared these terrible fates by secret agent Austin Powers (also played by Mike Meyers), but not before these various, ahem, projects are well past their planning stages and have begun implementation.

Now, the reason Dr. Evil is desirous that his pet/guard sharks have lasers attached to their heads bears some scrutiny. The stated purpose is that he “…figure(s) every creature deserves a warm meal.”[i] This reason is, of course, comedy gold, since it provides an extremely silly purpose on top of a clearly unreasonable request.

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

I’ve endured several instances of highly-placed executives making, umm, unfortunate Management Information System (MIS) requests of me in my career, but two in particular stand out in my memory as being illustrative of what can happen in PM space when people with a limited knowledge of Project Management principles are put in charge. The first of these involved a PM who was very interested that I, his project controls specialist, create for him a “swim lane chart.” With a little prodding I discovered that this “swim lane chart” was actually a PERT chart, sorted in rows by performing organization.

“Sure, we can do that. We’ll need to start with a Work Breakdown Structure, then develop the project’s Organizational Breakdown Structure, which will allow us to create the Responsibility/Accountability Matrix…”

“I don’t want any of that. I just want a swim lane chart.”

“I understand, but the boxes in the PERT … I mean, “swim lane chart,” represent Work Packages, and to create them, we’ll need a WBS…”

“Look, I’m telling you I don’t want any of that! I just want a swim lane chart!”

Seeing him get more agitated and insistent led me to believe that I was making no progress, so I demurred and told him I would get right on it, and headed back to my office. While I was en route this guy called my line manager, and had me kicked off the project.

The second was similar. An executive was brought in from a place that was really not very analogous to his new situation. After a few weeks I received the out-of-the-blue assignment to help him acquire and implement a specific computer application that was billed as an “action item tracker.” My first meeting was with this exec and the software’s marketing team, who had obviously already sold the exec on its “benefits.” The meeting started with just me and the exec in the conference room, with the marketers on video.

“What role is being envisioned for this app?” I asked.

“It’s an action item tracker!” came the exec’s reply, already somewhat agitated.

“Okay, but (this organization) already has an institutional action item tracker. Will this application do something that the institutional one doesn’t?”

The frantic looks between the marketers and the exec quickly and clearly informed me that no one had even thought to look at the existing systems for duplicate (or even compatible) functionality.

“This one is just for (a specific set of) projects. Also, I want it to relay performance information.”

“You mean like Critical Path analysis? Do you want it to perform a forward/backward pass by itself, or should it take in data from (the existing CPM software)?”

Again, it became immediately clear that no one had even thought about duplicate or compatible functionality.

“The app doesn’t have a utility that will accept data from (our CPM software)” the software marketing guys offered.

“Can it perform Critical Path calculations itself?”

“No.”

The exec called an early end to the meeting. After I left, he contacted my line manager, and had me removed from the project.

Now, since this calling of the line manager and having me removed business has an Austin Powers analogy to Dr. Evil pushing a button on a console and having the occupant of a specific conference room chair ejected into a fiery pit, I think I can safely assert a couple of take-aways. The first is that most (if not all) PM-types will encounter, at some point in their careers, an exec who doesn’t understand the basics of Project Management nor Management Information System architecture, but is nonetheless in a position of making key decisions in those arenas. The second is that these people will intensely resent anyone who points out the deficiencies in their ill-conceived initiatives.

So, how do you attach a laser to a shark’s head? You don’t. If asked, you get out of the conference room before your chair ejects you into a fiery pit.

[i] Retrieved from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Austin_Powers:_International_Man_of_Mystery on April 26, 2023, 20:43 MDT.