Problematic Stakeholder: How can I make this work?
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I'm looking for advice on how to deal with a problematic stakeholder/boss. If your advice has anything to do with quitting or leaving, save your breath. I'm well aware of that option. I'm interested in hearing ways to salvage the project. I joined a small business whose owner wanted to replace their failing DOS-based ERP with an ASP.NET solution. (Awesome, right?) My boss, the owner, is a 60 yr old, stocky bulldog whose tenacity is at the core of his successful business. Around the office he has the reputation for being a meddlesome teddy-bear. I am the only in-house developer. The biggest problem is that I can't seem to find a way to communicate with the owner. He has yelled at me multiple times for asking questions and drawing diagrams :confused:. He has shut down my attempts to understand the business, making it nearly impossible to put a game plan together. He doesn't understand the process of software development and constantly says things like, "Do we really need to do all that? Can't you just start with the first screen?" "Sure - what do you want the first screen to do?" "Exactly what it does right now?" "But it doesn't really suit the way your staff does business." "Well, we'll change the parts that don't work?" "Ok - How? What parts don't work? How should-" "Look we can just deal with that later. Let's just start building the first screen and go from there." I tried to explain that I need to understand the processes that I'm trying to support before I can 'design a screen'. Exasperated, the owner grabbed a fresh-out-of-college graphic designer in marketing and told her that she would be designing the layout and workflow of the new app. :wtf: A few weeks later I received a mock-up of a giant page with a billion fields and no discernible purpose. The owner loved it. He stopped by and generously asked me if there was anything I'd change. :omg: How would you turn this into a win? Subversively talk to staff, build a plan in secret and slowly evolve the graphic artist's shotgun layout into the more appropriate design by pointing out flaws one at a time? Is it worth the effort? Just wire it up like the owner wants and let the flaws become self-evident?
Go through the new screen with a knowledgeable user, then get him to tell the boss it's crap and will cost him customers.
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I'm looking for advice on how to deal with a problematic stakeholder/boss. If your advice has anything to do with quitting or leaving, save your breath. I'm well aware of that option. I'm interested in hearing ways to salvage the project. I joined a small business whose owner wanted to replace their failing DOS-based ERP with an ASP.NET solution. (Awesome, right?) My boss, the owner, is a 60 yr old, stocky bulldog whose tenacity is at the core of his successful business. Around the office he has the reputation for being a meddlesome teddy-bear. I am the only in-house developer. The biggest problem is that I can't seem to find a way to communicate with the owner. He has yelled at me multiple times for asking questions and drawing diagrams :confused:. He has shut down my attempts to understand the business, making it nearly impossible to put a game plan together. He doesn't understand the process of software development and constantly says things like, "Do we really need to do all that? Can't you just start with the first screen?" "Sure - what do you want the first screen to do?" "Exactly what it does right now?" "But it doesn't really suit the way your staff does business." "Well, we'll change the parts that don't work?" "Ok - How? What parts don't work? How should-" "Look we can just deal with that later. Let's just start building the first screen and go from there." I tried to explain that I need to understand the processes that I'm trying to support before I can 'design a screen'. Exasperated, the owner grabbed a fresh-out-of-college graphic designer in marketing and told her that she would be designing the layout and workflow of the new app. :wtf: A few weeks later I received a mock-up of a giant page with a billion fields and no discernible purpose. The owner loved it. He stopped by and generously asked me if there was anything I'd change. :omg: How would you turn this into a win? Subversively talk to staff, build a plan in secret and slowly evolve the graphic artist's shotgun layout into the more appropriate design by pointing out flaws one at a time? Is it worth the effort? Just wire it up like the owner wants and let the flaws become self-evident?
One thing I would suggest if you think the owner has the patience for it, is to ask what are his favorite things about the mockup the designer did. I've done this for a few mockups and sometimes been astounded at what the responses are. The favorite thing may be that she used so much orange that matched the company logo or that the buttons have rounded corners that the owner thinks look more modern than the legacy system. I'm not kidding. I've gotten responses like this in the past that had nothing to do with how the system worked. Finding out what makes this design a success in the owners eyes will help you know what is important to preserve and where you can suggest changes.
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I'm looking for advice on how to deal with a problematic stakeholder/boss. If your advice has anything to do with quitting or leaving, save your breath. I'm well aware of that option. I'm interested in hearing ways to salvage the project. I joined a small business whose owner wanted to replace their failing DOS-based ERP with an ASP.NET solution. (Awesome, right?) My boss, the owner, is a 60 yr old, stocky bulldog whose tenacity is at the core of his successful business. Around the office he has the reputation for being a meddlesome teddy-bear. I am the only in-house developer. The biggest problem is that I can't seem to find a way to communicate with the owner. He has yelled at me multiple times for asking questions and drawing diagrams :confused:. He has shut down my attempts to understand the business, making it nearly impossible to put a game plan together. He doesn't understand the process of software development and constantly says things like, "Do we really need to do all that? Can't you just start with the first screen?" "Sure - what do you want the first screen to do?" "Exactly what it does right now?" "But it doesn't really suit the way your staff does business." "Well, we'll change the parts that don't work?" "Ok - How? What parts don't work? How should-" "Look we can just deal with that later. Let's just start building the first screen and go from there." I tried to explain that I need to understand the processes that I'm trying to support before I can 'design a screen'. Exasperated, the owner grabbed a fresh-out-of-college graphic designer in marketing and told her that she would be designing the layout and workflow of the new app. :wtf: A few weeks later I received a mock-up of a giant page with a billion fields and no discernible purpose. The owner loved it. He stopped by and generously asked me if there was anything I'd change. :omg: How would you turn this into a win? Subversively talk to staff, build a plan in secret and slowly evolve the graphic artist's shotgun layout into the more appropriate design by pointing out flaws one at a time? Is it worth the effort? Just wire it up like the owner wants and let the flaws become self-evident?
The Boss seems to act like he's the only user of the system. You might try breaking the project definition into "user views of the business process," giving the importance of his complex overview prominent recognition. At the same time, you need to collect what are the needs and hurdles of the other employees as they do their daily work. Try to enlist the support of the employee he needs/trusts most to work with you on project definition and present some (not all!) of the employee's important needs to Boss. Try to get him work with the employee and you together to optimize business processes. Be sure to be seen as paying attention to the Boss's ideas, then refine them with the employee later. Sometimes the key employee can present ideas which would be immediately rejected if they came from an outsider. Perhaps the Boss is trying to deal with a business perceived as slipping out of his control and wants a complex dashboard that only HE/SHE can understand ... that's trouble for you and may explain why he's so reluctant to share business processes with you. Good luck, if that's the case. On the other hand, if he really wants to grow the business and trusts his employees he needs to understand that different employees can work more efficiently with their own constrained view of the business processes and that giving everyone the big dashboard view is a threat to the security of his business model. A few off-work team building sessions with you, a favored employee and Boss might help. Go out for dinner and drinks to try to break the ice.
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I'm looking for advice on how to deal with a problematic stakeholder/boss. If your advice has anything to do with quitting or leaving, save your breath. I'm well aware of that option. I'm interested in hearing ways to salvage the project. I joined a small business whose owner wanted to replace their failing DOS-based ERP with an ASP.NET solution. (Awesome, right?) My boss, the owner, is a 60 yr old, stocky bulldog whose tenacity is at the core of his successful business. Around the office he has the reputation for being a meddlesome teddy-bear. I am the only in-house developer. The biggest problem is that I can't seem to find a way to communicate with the owner. He has yelled at me multiple times for asking questions and drawing diagrams :confused:. He has shut down my attempts to understand the business, making it nearly impossible to put a game plan together. He doesn't understand the process of software development and constantly says things like, "Do we really need to do all that? Can't you just start with the first screen?" "Sure - what do you want the first screen to do?" "Exactly what it does right now?" "But it doesn't really suit the way your staff does business." "Well, we'll change the parts that don't work?" "Ok - How? What parts don't work? How should-" "Look we can just deal with that later. Let's just start building the first screen and go from there." I tried to explain that I need to understand the processes that I'm trying to support before I can 'design a screen'. Exasperated, the owner grabbed a fresh-out-of-college graphic designer in marketing and told her that she would be designing the layout and workflow of the new app. :wtf: A few weeks later I received a mock-up of a giant page with a billion fields and no discernible purpose. The owner loved it. He stopped by and generously asked me if there was anything I'd change. :omg: How would you turn this into a win? Subversively talk to staff, build a plan in secret and slowly evolve the graphic artist's shotgun layout into the more appropriate design by pointing out flaws one at a time? Is it worth the effort? Just wire it up like the owner wants and let the flaws become self-evident?
Analogies are your friend. It would help to know what industry you are working with to make them more pertinent. Say you are going to build cars. You start with a frame, then you add wheels. So you setup your assembly line to build a frame and then add wheels. After ten cars roll through you realize they need brakes. So now you have to dismantle those cars, and completely re-tool your assembly line. You do that over and over with each feature/part and then you realize that the warehouse you bought isn't big enough for all of the stations you need in your assembly line. An ERP application is the assembly line for every transaction in his business.
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Although I don't agree with the tone of the answer, I do kind of agree with the message. I think you're trying to play basket ball with foot ball rules. He obviously is not interested in going a "traditional" route of explaining every intricacy of the application, go through all the hypothetical scenarios, and mentally building the solution in his head and envisioning it before you code. The thought that you could change that is, in my opinion, wrongheaded and doomed to cost way more in the long run, contrary to what people are saying here. I think the teachable moment here is indeed for you, not him. This is a good example of why "traditional" methods perform very poorly, and why an "iterative", and more so "lean", approach is a better tool for this job. DO take this mock up and DO create a, more or less, wireframe app around it. Do this quickly and do not think too much about it. You will find that by giving him a more concrete example of the application and flow you will learn much more and much faster. Once he sees it for his own eyes and does not have to think abstractly about the application, I think you'll find that he will describe it more and more. Perhaps even create that fast screen, and after that, do think about it and create a different screen with things tweaked in the direction you'd like to take things as you see them now. He'll tell you where you are right and where you are wrong. If everyone had the ability to visualize a complex system like you are building (why you building one rather than buying one would be my first question, anyways) then no one would need your skills. His skills are obviously more interpersonal or sales related. I'm not sure what mix you have, but I think the FIRST thing you need to realize is that you CANNOT change someone fundamentally. You need to look at things differently and seriously challenge yourself to find a way to take his strengths and utilize them, rather than fix his weaknesses. (Hmmm... I think there's a book about that... right? :-\ )
Well said, @cwmillerli! Some kind of Upside Down Aikido Programming... ;-) Here is the thing: Since you don't want to quit, one of you two guys will have to be flexible, at least at the beginning, and that is you. Before the boss will listen to you, you first have to gain his trust. To do that, he needs to feel that you take him seriously and that you listen to his needs. Giving him that first screen will do that, so do it. Tell him just once very strongly but shortly, with whitness or proof to support it later, that his methode will cost more money and time at long term. You can then recall this moment later when things really get out of hands. Make sure you avoid repeating it after having said it. What's the big deal if you have to rebuild to often because of his approach? You don't want to leave, he is not listening but it's his company! You don't have a choice. Do you? Some people only listen when they get hit. So let him feel the consequences of his methode if you're so sure that is what will happen finally. What do you care? It's his company, not yours. And if this really get bad along the way, well, you've told him, right! If you feel you can code in such a way to limit the dammages because of his approach, do that. If it's too much work for you, leave it. One positive thing is that you'll be having a job because there is so much to do/fix. That counts too. It won't be your fault if the project takes too long, so why bother? We, at CodeProject, we all know you've tried :-) Good luck!
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Although I don't agree with the tone of the answer, I do kind of agree with the message. I think you're trying to play basket ball with foot ball rules. He obviously is not interested in going a "traditional" route of explaining every intricacy of the application, go through all the hypothetical scenarios, and mentally building the solution in his head and envisioning it before you code. The thought that you could change that is, in my opinion, wrongheaded and doomed to cost way more in the long run, contrary to what people are saying here. I think the teachable moment here is indeed for you, not him. This is a good example of why "traditional" methods perform very poorly, and why an "iterative", and more so "lean", approach is a better tool for this job. DO take this mock up and DO create a, more or less, wireframe app around it. Do this quickly and do not think too much about it. You will find that by giving him a more concrete example of the application and flow you will learn much more and much faster. Once he sees it for his own eyes and does not have to think abstractly about the application, I think you'll find that he will describe it more and more. Perhaps even create that fast screen, and after that, do think about it and create a different screen with things tweaked in the direction you'd like to take things as you see them now. He'll tell you where you are right and where you are wrong. If everyone had the ability to visualize a complex system like you are building (why you building one rather than buying one would be my first question, anyways) then no one would need your skills. His skills are obviously more interpersonal or sales related. I'm not sure what mix you have, but I think the FIRST thing you need to realize is that you CANNOT change someone fundamentally. You need to look at things differently and seriously challenge yourself to find a way to take his strengths and utilize them, rather than fix his weaknesses. (Hmmm... I think there's a book about that... right? :-\ )
Yes, the owner is begging for an agile project here!! Agile is the type of development he's wanting and heck, OP, why not go that route? The OP could start with this screen the owner designed that does nothing actually behind the scenes, sure, but is what he (and hopefully other users! understand and want). Then you say, ok, what part do you want me to work on in the first 2 weeks? He tells you and you go work on that. You bring back to him in couple weeks what you have and repeat. When he sees that in the 3rd sprint as you all get deeper into it that you have to now rework stuff from sprint 1 or 2, and that it will take some time to do that in the current sprint, he might start seeing how you being told stuff up front, at some base level of knowledge shared, will be beneficial to him as well. Now, you have a very valid concern about the business domain. ..understanding that so you know how to design (re-design) the database. .no getting around that. But maybe you could make class objects for now and use those, then you'd learn as you go what these are and how they relate, and these become your tables. Dunno, but I agree with those saying you'll find it very difficult not operating iteratively like he's asking and there are good aspects to this as well.
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Some very good advice from the others so far. I find it helps to have a few real-world analogies at hand to illustrate the need for analysis and planning. For example you could take the example of a company ordering a fleet of trucks and then finding out that the pallets you use don't quite fit 4 abreast so you lose 25% delivery capacity. The solution is to either replace the whole fleet (expensive) or redesign the pallets (non-standard solution) with a knock-on effect on product package sizes as a whole. I'm sure that you can come up with something suitable for his mind-set.
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I'm looking for advice on how to deal with a problematic stakeholder/boss. If your advice has anything to do with quitting or leaving, save your breath. I'm well aware of that option. I'm interested in hearing ways to salvage the project. I joined a small business whose owner wanted to replace their failing DOS-based ERP with an ASP.NET solution. (Awesome, right?) My boss, the owner, is a 60 yr old, stocky bulldog whose tenacity is at the core of his successful business. Around the office he has the reputation for being a meddlesome teddy-bear. I am the only in-house developer. The biggest problem is that I can't seem to find a way to communicate with the owner. He has yelled at me multiple times for asking questions and drawing diagrams :confused:. He has shut down my attempts to understand the business, making it nearly impossible to put a game plan together. He doesn't understand the process of software development and constantly says things like, "Do we really need to do all that? Can't you just start with the first screen?" "Sure - what do you want the first screen to do?" "Exactly what it does right now?" "But it doesn't really suit the way your staff does business." "Well, we'll change the parts that don't work?" "Ok - How? What parts don't work? How should-" "Look we can just deal with that later. Let's just start building the first screen and go from there." I tried to explain that I need to understand the processes that I'm trying to support before I can 'design a screen'. Exasperated, the owner grabbed a fresh-out-of-college graphic designer in marketing and told her that she would be designing the layout and workflow of the new app. :wtf: A few weeks later I received a mock-up of a giant page with a billion fields and no discernible purpose. The owner loved it. He stopped by and generously asked me if there was anything I'd change. :omg: How would you turn this into a win? Subversively talk to staff, build a plan in secret and slowly evolve the graphic artist's shotgun layout into the more appropriate design by pointing out flaws one at a time? Is it worth the effort? Just wire it up like the owner wants and let the flaws become self-evident?
What a classic: I want 5 pounds of software ... and make it purple! There's plenty of good advice been given already, but with an obstinate client they may still get nowhere. Perversely, the most difficult clients can become your biggest fans in the long run, but it's a long painful road to get there. Generally, contract positions can get away with being more direct, but in-house you get less listening and more "just do it!" If the other approaches don't work, the best suggestion I can make is to do it his way (sort of). Start by building a prototype. Call a review meeting and let the other staff pull it to pieces. Keep the ball rolling by throwing in your own observations/questions: "How about this scenario, how should we deal with that?" Some people are concrete thinkers and need to visualize; we programmers tend to be abstract/conceptual and we can give a concrete thinker a headache! You could ask him to nominate one or two go-to people when he's too busy to answer your questions, then rely on these to build your knowledge. Review comments can be very useful in understanding the business and the process bottlenecks. Make meetings short, productive and frequent; make sure you have material to cover or cancel the meeting. When he evades questions and gets aggressive, back off and follow up by email. Use examples he might understand. Iterate prototypes to show progress and converge to an adequate solution. Look at what competitors are doing (if you can) and be more open about the business type. There are a lot of experienced people on CP - use them! Knowledge elicitation is often a challenge and takes experience. Sometimes it seems easy, but you'll find the pleasant person that instructed you was trying to help you by simpifying, only to find later that you are missing loads of "edge cases". Look out for weasel words (like "usually", "almost never", "I don't think you need worry about that"). Sometimes you get no feedback and project failure is "your fault". Good luck and good for you for sticking to it!
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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I'm looking for advice on how to deal with a problematic stakeholder/boss. If your advice has anything to do with quitting or leaving, save your breath. I'm well aware of that option. I'm interested in hearing ways to salvage the project. I joined a small business whose owner wanted to replace their failing DOS-based ERP with an ASP.NET solution. (Awesome, right?) My boss, the owner, is a 60 yr old, stocky bulldog whose tenacity is at the core of his successful business. Around the office he has the reputation for being a meddlesome teddy-bear. I am the only in-house developer. The biggest problem is that I can't seem to find a way to communicate with the owner. He has yelled at me multiple times for asking questions and drawing diagrams :confused:. He has shut down my attempts to understand the business, making it nearly impossible to put a game plan together. He doesn't understand the process of software development and constantly says things like, "Do we really need to do all that? Can't you just start with the first screen?" "Sure - what do you want the first screen to do?" "Exactly what it does right now?" "But it doesn't really suit the way your staff does business." "Well, we'll change the parts that don't work?" "Ok - How? What parts don't work? How should-" "Look we can just deal with that later. Let's just start building the first screen and go from there." I tried to explain that I need to understand the processes that I'm trying to support before I can 'design a screen'. Exasperated, the owner grabbed a fresh-out-of-college graphic designer in marketing and told her that she would be designing the layout and workflow of the new app. :wtf: A few weeks later I received a mock-up of a giant page with a billion fields and no discernible purpose. The owner loved it. He stopped by and generously asked me if there was anything I'd change. :omg: How would you turn this into a win? Subversively talk to staff, build a plan in secret and slowly evolve the graphic artist's shotgun layout into the more appropriate design by pointing out flaws one at a time? Is it worth the effort? Just wire it up like the owner wants and let the flaws become self-evident?
Do you have access to the DOS code? Could you figure out what it does and duplicate it in ASP.NET? An application does not have to be a normalized, objectified work of perfection. This guy obviously does not want to be "Educated", so I would not try. If you see obvious design problems along the way, you could tackle them a bit at a time when you get to them, even if that means rewriting a lot of your code.
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I'm looking for advice on how to deal with a problematic stakeholder/boss. If your advice has anything to do with quitting or leaving, save your breath. I'm well aware of that option. I'm interested in hearing ways to salvage the project. I joined a small business whose owner wanted to replace their failing DOS-based ERP with an ASP.NET solution. (Awesome, right?) My boss, the owner, is a 60 yr old, stocky bulldog whose tenacity is at the core of his successful business. Around the office he has the reputation for being a meddlesome teddy-bear. I am the only in-house developer. The biggest problem is that I can't seem to find a way to communicate with the owner. He has yelled at me multiple times for asking questions and drawing diagrams :confused:. He has shut down my attempts to understand the business, making it nearly impossible to put a game plan together. He doesn't understand the process of software development and constantly says things like, "Do we really need to do all that? Can't you just start with the first screen?" "Sure - what do you want the first screen to do?" "Exactly what it does right now?" "But it doesn't really suit the way your staff does business." "Well, we'll change the parts that don't work?" "Ok - How? What parts don't work? How should-" "Look we can just deal with that later. Let's just start building the first screen and go from there." I tried to explain that I need to understand the processes that I'm trying to support before I can 'design a screen'. Exasperated, the owner grabbed a fresh-out-of-college graphic designer in marketing and told her that she would be designing the layout and workflow of the new app. :wtf: A few weeks later I received a mock-up of a giant page with a billion fields and no discernible purpose. The owner loved it. He stopped by and generously asked me if there was anything I'd change. :omg: How would you turn this into a win? Subversively talk to staff, build a plan in secret and slowly evolve the graphic artist's shotgun layout into the more appropriate design by pointing out flaws one at a time? Is it worth the effort? Just wire it up like the owner wants and let the flaws become self-evident?
So, the owner actually said: “replace (my) failing DOS-based ERP with an ‘ASP.NET solution’”? … And replace my DOS / dBase II / whatever based file system with (for example) SQL Server Enterprise Edition? I get the sense that someone is trying to sell the owner something ("leading-edge") he may not need, want, or can afford; without even addressing what it is that is “failing”. Perhaps, all he needs is “QuickBooks”. ERP systems are made up of multiple "sub-systems". One does not typically replace the whole thing in one fell swoop. You identify the biggest "pain point" and go from there. If the owner says he wants to "replace" his existing ERP system, the easiest way to get him talking is to respond "why?" (Though I doubt that he actually said he wanted to "replace" it).