Friday March 04, 2005

Rock dropped into pond

It's not very often that I directly benefit from the results of the work that I do outside of my own department when encouraging and assisting in the implementation of SGRT in Sun, and yesterday I did. I went to help out in a Managed Services operation that Sun is running on behalf of a customer. Soon after the Managed Services management team were formed they asked to be trained in SGRT, and over the course of the last few months all of them have been trained, triggers for use installed and mentoring running.

The customer seems to have dropped a metaphorical stone into the teeming pond of the many suppliers that make up this project, and right now the splashing of the water is still going on. There's fear, uncertainty and dread, and for a few days all those who have been made aware that there is a problem are waiting for the foam to clear. The suppliers know that the customer is upset, and not what the customer is upset about – the holistic detail has not yet filtered down to the individual teams who supply stuff.

It was good to be there, to watch the people who I'd worked with on the installation of the SGRT capability saying “What's the list of concerns?”, “What's the problem statement?”, “until we have a clear understanding of the problem we're not going to simply make activity, let's concentrate on getting a clear understanding first”...

It was a beautiful thing to watch, and in the time period when management of the situation is more necessary than usual, it's good to have confidence that the skills and processes that they have will maximise the chances of a successful outcome.