Consultant

1995 to 1999

Negotiating settlements: In 1995, SBRC outsourced its IT department to the Computer Science Corporation (CSC )and CSC immediately put me to work at their client site. This meant the possibility of consulting with companies around the world. I was delighted. Although I never made it to places like Paris or Tokyo, I did get to see horse racing in Kentucky and taste fried scallops in Boston. One of my last gigs was with Western Data Systems (WDS), a software developer located closer to home (Calabasas). They were way behind schedule on releasing their next-generation ‘enterprise system’ – and there was plenty of blame going around. WDS was accusing the customers of delaying the beta-test while the customers were accusing WDS of shoddy work. They didn’t feel like it was their job to find system problems. They felt their responsibility was to ensure compliance. Now they were both pointing the finger at me for slowing things down even more. The line from a Bruce Springsteen song was going through my head “I’m caught in a cross-fire that I don’t understand.” I didn’t feel like a consultant at all. I figured the best thing I could do was roll-up my sleeves and start testing in-house, instead of waiting for the customer. WDS agreed to let me do this and even lent me a staff of QA folks. Now, the QA folks were good at testing things like graphical interfaces, but they didn’t have experience testing enterprise-software. I had us begin by simulating business operations (like ordering, shipping and billing) then started breaking down each operation into a set of business rules we could test for (like order-fulfillment and revenue-recognition). The QA folks were actually enjoying this while I was afraid we were getting farther behind. We couldn’t exhaustively test every possibility. I arranged for us to meet with the software developers and had them point out where the upgrades were made, especially the ones that changed the way the system was originally designed to work. Experience told me that this is where problems are most likely to occur. We went back and refined the test plans to target those areas for repetitive, scenario-like testing, while reducing everything else to a one-time set up. It worked. We were testing the system where it was most likely to fail, identifying more problems and getting faster turn-around from programming. At the same time, I was banking on the beta-site customers finding errors that we weren’t catching, and hoping we could get away with saying things like: ‘those are out-of-scope’ or ‘that’s best dealt with in the next service pack’. It was a bluff, but it worked. It even made us sound a little like Microsoft, which they considered to be a center of excellence (?) and it made me feel like a consultant again.

Consultant

1999 to 2001

Demolition expert: I have a theory about the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve weren’t cast out ..they blew it up themselves. When I first arrived in Santa Barbara, I felt like a kid at summer camp. Our offices were within walking distance of the beach and a major university. I found that I could develop computing systems in my head while sitting on the bluffs. I had a talented group of co-workers ..and an account manager named Sherry who was our best promoter. We were at the top of our game ..none of the other consulting groups won as many contracts ..or contributed as much to the revenue stream. Nobody screwed with us. I went out on medical leave in 1999. While I was gone, Sherry retired to Arizona to take care of her ailing husband. With her gone, people from headquarters in Los Angeles saw an opportunity to take-charge of a kick-ass consulting group. Little did they know they were stepping into foreign culture. They brought in a manager named Pete ..and shortly there-after most of the ‘talent’ bailed. Next Pete set out to demolish our relationship with the local customers. Pretty soon they were complaining to CSC headquarters that they were not getting the service they were accustomed to (and paying for). When I returned in 2000, headquarters asked me to step-in and help since I was the only one left after the exodus. I talked to the customers. They told me they had awarded us contracts worth millions of dollars, and were waiting on bids for several more. They said it felt like their requests were falling into a black hole ..and they were frustrated. I sat down with Pete, but he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. I started thumbing through a stack of folders on his conference table and found one that said ‘Request for service: Inventory shortages’ and another that said ‘Request for proposal: Supply Chain System’. I went “Hey Pete, here they are!” He said he had no idea what they were asking for and wasn’t about to risk assigning them to anyone (!?) When I suggested I could help, he got visibly angry and said I could help by ‘sweeping the floor’. Pete was under pressure from headquarters to reach the same level of billable hours as we were doing before. So he had everybody doing what he knew best. I called it ‘sweeping the floors’ but it was actually things like rewriting low-level code, changing file handling protocols and reporting progress on technical issues that made no difference to the customer. Meanwhile requests for service were being ignored. Pete hated meeting with the customers because he said he could never understand what they were talking about and were a waste of time. He had technical issues to deal with. Reminded me of the most valuable lesson I learned: it’s all about customer service and business applications ..not the latest device coming out of IT [link]. I thought that could definitely apply here, but it was too late. We had already lost several big contracts and CSC was forced to shut down the Santa Barbara branch. I felt we had everything providence could bestow ..and blew it up.

to be continued ..