My New Year's Resolution: Heal My Department

There's a bit of a schism in my department. Earlier in the year a silver tongued consultant slithered into my organization under the covers of an unrelated project and in the blink of an eye convinced the president the the board that the B2C side of my operation could be rebuilt from scratch on an antiquated framework by an off-shore team. The next thing I knew I was running half a department (the remaining B2B side).

The tale is as old as time and history has repeated itself a million times over. For some inexplicable reason, the powers that be always trust an outsider more than an insider. I was the harbinger of doom. I recounted to horror stories of off-shore teams. I demonstrated the deficiencies of the framework. But it was all for naught. The checks were signed and the gears were put into motion.

Fast forward to tonight. The project is months behind schedule. The code is a steaming pile of fecal matter. Half of my remaining in-house department is working themselves to exhaustion into the wee hours of the night, including weekends, trying desperately to save it. They're likely to work through X-mas and New Years. For the sake of "delivering on time" they've cut all "non-essential" steps out of the process, like formal requirements, unit testing, peer code review, etc. It's the infamous IT death march.

Come the turn of the year, the contracts are up. The consultant and the off-shore team will be sent on their merry way, and I'll be left to clean up their mess. Lucky me. But I'm up to the task. I've demonstrated with the B2B team (the half of the department that remained under my control) that I can deliver projects successfully without sacrificing the process and people. I can fix the B2C side, and make the department whole again.

Let the healing begin.