Preparing for battle

So... Today I have this 'finger pointing' session to attend to. Not unusual, unfortunately. The only thing that bothers me is that there would be no problem if I didn't happen to fall sick. In my absence, the development team from the project had a question, I wasn't available to answer, the message was forwarded to my 'colleague' who did not really bother to understand the background of the project before brusquely saying the software version was defective and they should upgrade and telling my supporters on site they were 'incompetent' to perform the tasks I assigned them.

Now, let me put it like this: The guys dealing with the development team have not been trained but they have been doing hands on for some time and compared to the others working in the project they are the most knowledgeable folks we have available. They are my eyes and hands when I am not around. Telling them they are incompetent is definitely an approach we should avoid.

As a result, I had to do some damage control when they said “if we are incompetent, we won't touch the servers anymore - you come and fix your own stuff”. Great, isn't it? That did not help me any.

The other problem was, prior to beginning this project, the customer asked us if they would have to upgrade the software version. There would be no extra charge for that BUT there would be a different approach on implementing the solution and that meant more money for the development team. They did not have the budget so we all agreed we would stick to the version they had. Functionality would be limited but sufficient to attend to their expected features.

When my fellow co-worker said the software was “buggy”, could not provide the features they wanted and they should upgrade (he went as far as to sending them the new version) he created a 'trust' problem. The end user started questioning if we actually knew what we were talking about when we suggested they retained their software version. Worst, they started asking if they should believe us when we said the new version, soon to be implemented in a new project, was compatible. They feared they would make the change and later on they would be informed that “the version they were using was buggy too”.

Do you see the problem? I am not sure if I am making myself understood but I can tell you it was messy. Those were the reasons for our 'finger pointing' session today. But everything will be fine, I know. All's well when it ends well and the damage control has been done.