Grumpy Middle Manager

What happened when there are more project managers and more planning than the time and people who actually do the work?

After half a dozen “planning meetings,” our brilliant strategy for the new enterprise project has stalled because, surprise, we failed to plan the right way. So what’s the next logical step? Beg the higher-ups for 5 million dollars to hire one of the big-5 consulting firms to teach us how to “plan properly” and help us execute this revolutionary enterprise product.

Twenty PowerPoint presentations later, we still don’t have an execution plan, and the budget we set aside for planning is evaporating faster than our patience. So, naturally, we need another budget to “plan to have these consultants” plan further.

A few more million dollars later, we finally got a PLAN to execute. But there’s a twist: the consultants declared they will NOT do the following:

• AAA consultants will not look into the details of the features.
• AAA consultants will not write the user stories and design for the new CRM.
• AAA consultants will not design workflow management.
• AAA consultants will not decide the acceptance criteria.
• AAA consultants will not project manage the teams for execution.

But hey, at least we now know how to plan the planning of our planning meetings!