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> The belief was that getting consistent requirements would be a good starting point that would hopefully flow down the organisations involved. Given the frami

> The belief was that getting consistent requirements would be a good starting point that would hopefully flow down the organisations involved. Given the framing, I need to ask: what was the impact of the updated requirements, or has there not yet been sufficient time to tell?

KineticLensman 3y ago
I retired three years later so have lost touch. But before I left a couple of new procurements were starting up, and I attended at least one meeting where the separate customers were in fact in the same room and playing nicely with each other, which was a very good sign. The acquisition authority had also established some cross-cutting functions (design, contractual support) that would in theory support the new projects coherently, when they reached that point. As my career progressed, I got a better handle on the genuine cultural issues behind some of the customer-level differences. For example, one particular category of user had very different career progressions / longevity in different parts of the overall organisation (heroes in one part, zeros in the other, approximately). This affected the relative prioritisation of the relevant requirements by the respective customers, and the perceived value and affordability of solutions, in a way that overshadowed the tech-focussed arguments younger-techie-me would have made.
- shalmanese 3y ago
  Thanks for providing a concrete example of a) what a relatively mundane value-add via co-ordination looks like. Something like this is impossible to communicate without so much context but these stories are happening in every single pocket of a giant org. b) What the artistry of it is. It's not easy and can take years to understand a single co-ordination problem well enough that you push single pebble and cause the right avalanche of change c) Why anyone who is looking for impact inevitably gets drawn into it, independent of their feelings of whether they personally enjoy it or not (spoiler alert: I have never met anyone who has told me this was their true passion from birth. All of us wade into it reluctantly and eventually develop the internal motivation to make it satisfying).

KineticLensman 3y ago

I retired three years later so have lost touch. But before I left a couple of new procurements were starting up, and I attended at least one meeting where the separate customers were in fact in the same room and playing nicely with each other, which was a very good sign. The acquisition authority had also established some cross-cutting functions (design, contractual support) that would in theory support the new projects coherently, when they reached that point. As my career progressed, I got a better handle on the genuine cultural issues behind some of the customer-level differences. For example, one particular category of user had very different career progressions / longevity in different parts of the overall organisation (heroes in one part, zeros in the other, approximately). This affected the relative prioritisation of the relevant requirements by the respective customers, and the perceived value and affordability of solutions, in a way that overshadowed the tech-focussed arguments younger-techie-me would have made.

shalmanese 3y ago
Thanks for providing a concrete example of a) what a relatively mundane value-add via co-ordination looks like. Something like this is impossible to communicate without so much context but these stories are happening in every single pocket of a giant org. b) What the artistry of it is. It's not easy and can take years to understand a single co-ordination problem well enough that you push single pebble and cause the right avalanche of change c) Why anyone who is looking for impact inevitably gets drawn into it, independent of their feelings of whether they personally enjoy it or not (spoiler alert: I have never met anyone who has told me this was their true passion from birth. All of us wade into it reluctantly and eventually develop the internal motivation to make it satisfying).