New-Era has been many years in the planning and is only a few weeks from launch.

In the past year or so, all the divisions and work groups of the company have been asked to provide staff-members to New-Era in order to have them specify the exact functionality required.  The expectation of the project team being that the people provided to them would be experts in the workflow of the team they represent.  Almost without exception, this has not been the case.

Instead, each team dispatched the person they could most easily do without.  This person was either inept, new to the team, dysfunctional or some combination of the three.  Obviously they could not spare their best people - they were already busy doing the real work of the team!

Only now, with the project completion just weeks away have the New-Era roll-out team realised, during acceptance testing, that significant components are either under-specified or just plain wrong.

The panicked requests for more experienced representatives have been amusing to watch.

Go-live day will be fun.  Wish us luck.