{"id":1564,"date":"2015-10-28T10:51:12","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T09:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/?p=1564"},"modified":"2021-04-03T12:48:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-03T10:48:59","slug":"when-the-ceo-comes-to-you-some-empowering-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/2015\/10\/28\/when-the-ceo-comes-to-you-some-empowering-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"When the CIO asks you \/ Cuando el CIO te pregunta"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This (real) story dates some years back…<\/p>\n

I was lecturing one of those courses – consultancies, that so much have been trending for the last decades, at an international retailer and they had the typical case of an outsourced project, developed by a bad consultancy company that destroyed the code and was not able to meet requirements when the technical debt was already through the roof. Everyone in the end customer, from the last programmer to the CIO were worried with doubts on whether they could save the project as it was, or they would have to “discard and redo” it… so I was called in.<\/p>\n

I was there just doing my thing on getting the company to understand what the project was about so they could get hands on with it and at least be able to evaluate if in the future the project would evolve the right way, or if it was going to the worse. I was as the customer facilities when out of the blue, and old, really hard working man opens the door and everyone goes silent, he politely pulls me out of the room.<\/p>\n

He was just like I remembered my grandfather, a hard working guy, with a hard hand shake that made me think “he really used his hand for working” as you could fell it rough like sandpaper, the kind of first impression I love to have. He asked me only one question, “can we come back from this with what we have?” and my answer was to the point “yes, but you will need really qualified people to look in the code and improve without adding new functionality, just improving the code and solving the bugs… say 2 experts during 2 months, full time. And understand, I mean 2 cracks, not 2 programmers you need 2 geeks, 2 ninjas of this stuff”.<\/p>\n

The CIO looked at me with a mix of “I am talking with an alien being” and a “I get your message” face meaning I made clear that the issues were serious and only real experts could solve them with clear focus and without having business people messing around with new requirements.<\/p>\n

Just like with many other customers I was there for a short time, just to lecture them, answer specific questions on issues I had sparse information and then the issue was on someone else’s roof, but the fact the CIO came to me for advice, really felt like an empowering thing… and I hate that “empowering” word… but if there was a moment to use it, that was it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Esta historia (ver\u00eddica) es de hace unos a\u00f1os…<\/p>\n

Estuve dando uno de estos cursos – consultoria que son tan habituales hoy en dia en un retailer internacional, ten\u00edan el t\u00edpico caso de proyecto subcontratado a una consultora chunga que hab\u00eda destrozado el c\u00f3digo sin conseguir alcanzar los requisitos y el c\u00f3digo ten\u00eda una deuda t\u00e9cnica elevada. Todo el mundo en el cliente, desde el \u00faltimo programador hasta el CIO, estaba preguntandose si se pod\u00eda salvar el desastre o merec\u00eda la pena “tirarlo y volverlo a hacer”… y ah\u00ed es donde entre yo.<\/p>\n

Estaba all\u00ed en principio para que la plantilla del cliente final entendiera la herramienta y de paso la situaci\u00f3n de su propio proyecto y as\u00ed poder evaluar si en el futuro el proyecto evolucionar\u00eda de la forma apropiada, o si iba a peor. Estando en sus instalaciones con el equipo un se\u00f1or mayor abri\u00f3 la puerta y el murmullo que antes llenaba la habitaci\u00f3n desapareci\u00f3 por completo, a continuaci\u00f3n este se\u00f1or me pide que salga de la habitacion.<\/p>\n

Era tal y como recordaba a mi propio abuelo, un currante, con un estrechar de manos firme, como de papel de lija, una primera impresi\u00f3n genial a mi forma de ver. Solo me hizo una pregunta “podemos recuperar esto que tenemos y enderezarlo?” y mi respuesta fue clara “s\u00ed pero va a necesitar a gente realmente cualificada que mire el c\u00f3digo y lo mejore sin a\u00f1adir nuevas funcionalidades, solo resolver los problemas que hay en el c\u00f3digo… digamos 2 expertos, durante 2 meses a tiempo completo. Pero tenga en cuenta que me refiero a 2 cracks, no 2 programadores, necesita usted 2 mega freaks de esto, 2 aut\u00e9nticos ninjas”.<\/p>\n

El CIO me mir\u00f3 con una cara a mitad de camino entre “estoy hablando con un alien de otro planeta” y “pillo la idea” lo que significa que consegu\u00ed dejar claro el mensaje: los problemas eran graves y solo autenticos expertos podr\u00edan resolverlos si no hab\u00eda intromisiones desde negocio con nuevos requisitos.<\/p>\n

Como con otros clientes, solo estuve all\u00ed un periodo muy corto, para instruirles y resolver preguntas super especificas sobre problemas de los que apenas me habian contado nada (sigh!) pero el hecho de que el CIO me pidiera consejo, fue una experiencia muy “empoderante”, palabra que odio, pero si hab\u00eda un momento para usarla era ese.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This (real) story dates some years back… I was lecturing one of those courses – consultancies, that so much have been trending for the last decades, at an international retailer and they had the typical case of an outsourced project, developed by a bad consultancy company that destroyed the code and was not able to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[102],"tags":[108,82],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1815,"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions\/1815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artifactconsulting.com\/lapeira\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}