A project I worked on for a
previous employer that I got thrown into for whatever reason, involved the
implementation of three new systems. An
outside team came in to handle the design and implementation of these systems
and there was practically immediate scope creep that I got volunteered to
handle.
For this project, the team
that was brought in initially was a smaller group of people, but within a few
weeks, the small group grew to around 100 people. During this process, my company was also
outsourcing jobs and that meant we had people coming in to shadow employees who
were being laid off and that added an additional 50 people to the scope of
things. The problem or scope creep that
occurred was with gaining security access to our computer systems for all of
these people.
Having multiple projects
occur at the same time created a great deal of problems. About 90% of the IT personnel were being
outsourced, so there was a big bunch of confusion surrounding who would be
responsible for what and also a great deal of frustration and anger towards our
company for allowing this to happen.
Each person that was brought
in from the outside company had to go through a security process in order to
gain access to our network as well as security measures to gain access to each
share drive, program, etc. on our network.
What would normally have been about a one-week time-frame to grant
access went to being a one month or more time-frame due to the fact that so
many people were requesting access and the people that were granting the access
were being shifted around and/or outsourced.
This is where I came in at and was charged with coordinating all of the
access requests as well as badgering the IT department on a daily basis to get
the access granted. I had no prior
experience with this type of activity so I had to become a quick learner and a
very patient person.
To deal with these issues, I
formed a quick alliance with the manager of the implementation team and
together we came up with a way to track the requests and a list of contacts to
attempt to speed up the process. It did
not seem as though we were very successful because the process was still
entirely too long from beginning to end; however, we learned later on that we
were much more successful than any other departments who were going through
similar situations. I worked a lot of
overtime, learned how to effectively deal with the people that I needed to help
get this access granted, and learned a great deal about myself and my
coordination skills.
Looking back on this
project, I think there were many things that could have been done
differently. The first thing is that
there should have been a better understanding of the time it would take to get
the access granted. Secondly, if
information had been provided to me prior to a new person coming onto the
project, the requests could have been put in before the person actually showed
up on the job and this could have eliminated at least a week or two of wait
time. I would have staggered the
newcomers a little more so that there were not five to ten people showing up on
a Monday morning for work that were not able to access our systems and
therefore were somewhat useless. Lastly,
I would have made sure I formed a better relationship with the IT manager so
that there would have been smoother communication and possibly shorter wait
times for access to be granted.
