It's someone else's fault, and everyone should know it

If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
--God, Futurama

Dilemma of the day: fix a problem myself quietly, or point it out to others?

Work has been quiet this week. Most people are out of the office, of course, but I'm not, so I'm getting a little done on the doomed project. Technically, my review was supposed to start two days ago. However, all the people who could officially tell me to get started are out, and it is not ready at all. I have a couple questions, other people have a couple questions for each other, and I'd need to do work to actually implement the changes requested by the "informal review" before my own review can "officially" start. So instead, I've been working on a known issue that's only sort of part of my review. It's nice to get ahead of things a little... but then, this part is such a pain and so time-consuming that I really wouldn't want to do it at the same time as everything else.

In the process, I've found a few errors that had escaped notice until now. One problem in particular mushroomed from a molehill into... well, a heap the size of a person or so. I can't possibly compare this problem to a mountain, especially not considering what project it's a part of. It's a total of less than half a page that needed to be added or revised. But I definitely thought that I had identified the whole problem only to realize there was more to it at least three times. "OK, if we say this, then we have to refer to it in this other section. Wait, there already is a reference, but it's to the previous version. Wait, do we even have the latest version?"

I'm 90 percent sure that I've figured out the true extent of that problem by now. The thing I still haven't decided is whether I should fix it quietly by myself or e-mail the person responsible for it and ask him what he really meant and what to do about it.

There are a few reasons that I should probably ask for help.
1. Conscientiousness. As I said, I'd estimate a 90 percent chance I have the problem figured out. That's a 10 percent chance I don't. If it turns out that I am wrong about this, then finding out later on and having to fix it then is more work than firing off an e-mail now.
2. Ass-covering. Document that I'm working on the project at a stage when there's little tangible sign of it. Point out how many problems are other peoples' fault or could have been prevented by them.
3. It's in one of the unhelpful guy's sections, so I'm extra inclined to give the problem back to him if I possibly can. From where I sit it looks like his carelessness has caused so much unnecessary work that I'd like to spread some of it back onto him. Make him clean up his own mess.

But the fact that it involves the unhelpful guy is a good reason not to point it out, because, of course, of the difficulty of getting useful information from him. Really, the smartest, most efficient thing to do would be to fix the problem myself, but the main appeal of pointing it out to other people would be to say "See what he did this time? See what I have to deal with?"

Can't make this up

This is ridiculous.

-----Original Message-----
From: H.
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 12:01 PM
To: R., the lawyer on the doomed project
Cc: me
Subject: FW: the doomed project weekly review

FYI below -- I tried to discourage this but TMBB will be reviewing L** sections during your review. Please provide a link to the document you want them to review.

Very respectfully,
H.
Signature block

-----Original Message-----

From: B.
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2011 3:03 PM
To: H.
Cc: B2.
Subject: RE: the doomed project weekly update

Will push for this to be in parallel with the legal review. I don't know that we'll see changes as a result, but with those portions being fairly contained, this being a conceptual review, and PC review going for another week, I think we should be ok even if there are some changes...

-----Original Message-----
From: H.
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2011 1:26 PM
To: B., H.'s boss
Cc: B2., H.'s other boss
Subject: FW: Large OSV: The Week In Review (Dec 5, 2011)

Hello,

Please see email below -- this will delay legal review, which is currently underway. We were given assurances that this was vetted through all impacted offices. Please advise.

Very respectfully,
H.
Signature block

-----Original Message-----
From: N.
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2011 12:10 PM
To: H.
Cc: several people on the team and their bosses
Subject: RE: The doomed project weekly update

H.,
Since there is lots of ongoing discussion on L**, I think it would be worthwhile to have [team members' bosses' bosses, or TMBB] do an "informal" review & comment on those pieces of the reg text at this point rather than wait. This would include the new sections recently added to address training, construction, etc for L**, which were not in previous versions reviewed and commented on by TMBB. I'm not advocating that you delay any of the other work or adjust the timeline.
R,N.

To summarize, a bit about operational L** was added to the doomed project relatively late in the process. Fine. It's there, it's in, just in time for the "pens down" date when the subject matter experts would stop work as everyone agreed, so that me and the lawyer and economist could do our work in turn. But last week the team members' bosses' bosses, or TMBBs, pointed out that they've had an "informal review" of all the rest of the rulemaking, but it didn't include the bit about operational L**. So they're asking for the chance to do an informal review of operational L** as well.

At first glance that might look reasonable. Just a chance to do with one section what they've already done with all the rest. However, there are at least four problems with it.

1. "I'm not advocating that you delay any of the other work or adjust the timeline." I found that breathtaking. Why isn't he advocating that? He should be. Experience indicates that he should: the previous informal review took more than a month. I'd personally say that the last-minute stuff is in a rougher state than the rest, but you don't need that level of familiarity with the project to know that there's a problem here. Simple logic indicates that he should: the whole point of a review is that TMBBs might want to make changes, and if they do, that would take time. And really basic human courtesy indicates that he should: other team members have their own jobs to do. This guy wants to take other peoples' time for his review. All in all, that one line was ridiculous.

2. As H. points out, it was agreed upon by everyone that the "pens down" date came and went more than a week ago. The time to ask for something like this was back then. It's not like they just noticed the operational L** stuff on Friday. But either TMBB are so disorganized or haphazard that they didn't think of it at the time, or they thought of it but didn't want to kill the feeling of progress at the meeting. Neither of which speaks well of the quality of management here.

3. H.'s own boss said "with those portions being fairly contained, this being a conceptual review, and PC review going for another week, I think we should be ok even if there are some changes". The assumption there is false. These portions are not fairly contained. There are literally a dozen different sections in the document relevant to this. It took me a nontrivial amount of time just to make the document for review: find all the sections, copy-paste them into another document, and ask the lawyer about four borderline cases and an illegible section. TMBBs asked about the operational L** stuff added at the last minute, but he also asked about "training, construction, etc", neither of which is the last-minute stuff. This leads into yet another problem.

4. I left a ton of details out of the above e-mails, but basically, we decided we should put together everything related to L**. "Training", "construction", the operational L** that was added at the last minute and all the rest. All together, that's over 60 pages, about 20 percent of the total document. If they really did just want what they specifically listed, then that wouldn't have saved too much effort because I couldn't have easily figured out what those were without help, and if they were unclear that's just replacing one problem with another. But if they want to do an additional review of 20 percent of the document, this is a very, very late date to start it.

What a mess. I finished putting together the file for review this morning, so my job here is done until TMBBs have comments on it. But I found it interesting how such a relatively simple request could get so much wrong.

Could I do a better job? ... Well, maybe not.

Now and then I get to wondering about whether I'm actually doing everything I can to help other people. I complain so much here about clueness people and unnecessary work, but every so often I find myself thinking things like, "You should already know that, it was sent out in an e-mail... three months ago, along with a bunch of other information, mostly on another topic." or "You should already know that, it was discussed at several meetings... not like most people on the team come to even half the meetings, though." or "The whole team knows that, we've been doing it all along... but you just joined a month ago."

Maybe I could be doing more. I could go into more detail in e-mails to the team or group discussions. Minutes of meetings are normally e-mailed to me and H., but maybe people would be better informed if they got regular reminders about that stuff. The team is big enough that new people show up relatively regularly for one reason or another, and we could brief them better. How much would that help things?

But I have my doubts that that would do much good, because it never takes too long for people to ask stupid questions that I'm absolutely certain have been adequately explained, but they still don't know.

For example, in a meeting last week, the unhelpful guy asked which spreadsheet was the economic review matrix. Not only has he been told that many times both in person and by e-mail, not only has the economic review matrix been in use for months so if he didn't know he should have asked before now, not only has he personally been to meetings where he, the economist and I worked on the economic review matrix... but a computer screen was projected for the entire meeting to see open to the relevant folder on the network, and the economic review matrix has "economic review matrix" in its name. (And yes, it's clear that he could see the screen from where he was sitting and all that.)

Basically, the answer to his question was literally in front of his face. But he couldn't figure that out - and the unhelpful guy may be a recent, perfect example of this, but he's far from the only one - so I don't think more complete briefings by me would make too much of a difference.

The management will continue until morale improves

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" - Source unknown, probably Narcotics Anonymous

There was a meeting of the doomed project. In addition to the usual problems, apparently we've attracted attention from on high. This is never a good sign.

In addition to the doomed project, there are also two other projects with related focuses. There is a lot of overlap in resources between the three projects - in plain English, a lot of people who are assigned to more than one of the teams. At today's meeting, we learned that team members' bosses' bosses have noticed that these projects are having problems. To address this, they have told us to start updating them weekly on status and activities via a spreadsheet, in hopes that they can better identify exactly what the problems are.

This spreadsheet has rows for each person on the team (at least 20) and columns for various types of input (six). (If we had nothing to do with a certain issue, leaving its column blank is acceptable, but everyone is expected to fill at least something in weekly.) It will probably be a bit confusing, because in some ways it resembles spreadsheets the team has already been using but not in other ways and is used very differently. There is going to be a new spreadsheet created every week, and everyone on the team will be responsible for reporting on their own activity that week.

When faced with the problem "People on this project are working too hard and being pulled in too many directions", I'm sure that adding a new, nearly pointless requirement isn't the absolute worst way possible to help, but I'm also sure it's not a good way.

I suppose I could take a positive view of this. The proposed spreadsheet originally had seven columns of various categories of activity, but in this morning's meeting the team decided that we could narrow that down to six. (We eliminated two or three columns as redundant, but also added a new one and split another column into two separate ones.) So that means we'll have to keep track of a little less and it'll be a little clearer than the original draft. So the meeting could have gone worse than it did. That's good, I suppose.

(More general update on the doomed project: it recently transitioned to a new phase. The ball is now mainly in the lawyers' court, to be followed by mine, and then the economists'. This means that the subject matter experts will have to do a bit less for the next few weeks than they did for the past few months, and the lawyer, me, and the economist each will have more during our respective phases. As slow and horrible as things have been, and as abjectly we're going to fail at the official deadline, and as much as I'll hate the period when the ball is in my court, we actually are making progress. I think.)

Inherent in the system

I have to admit that while I'd say many problems with my job and in this office are the result of modern American politics, the American political system, or human nature in general, others are simply most likely due to errors by individual people after all. (For example, I'm lazy. But that's not news.)

The recent thing that prompted this post is that while the doomed project had a deadline of one year (actually, more like 14 months, but anyways), my supervisor pointed out to me a week ago that that's only counting from when the Congressional mandate was made. We had unofficial hints and informal warnings that it would be coming for several months before that. It was foreseeable. If this organization had acted on those hints and created a new team or took the team assigned to the general revision and put their feet to the fire, we might actually have made the deadline.

Why didn't we? I'm sure there are lots of reasons. Even if intergovernment cooperation was as good as it could possibly be, it would still take a certain amount of time for information from unofficial backroom channels of Congress to percolate to decision-makers in this agency and for them to make and implement their decision. There's a finite number of people with a finite amount of time to work, so putting them on this project would take them away from another. And maybe someone in this agency tried to prevent the mandate from happening and simply failed. And maybe the people in charge just didn't think the deadline would be a big problem at the time.

Given the state of the project right now and hindsight being 20/20, though, we should have started working on it earlier than we did. I'm sure there's some reason we didn't, but I have a hard time imagining a good one.

A maze of twisting passages, conclusion

I theorize that both the problems with this office building I have gone over in exhaustive detail and the problems we don't have that one might expect are both due to the pressures unique to federal government facilities.

Obviously, the federal government has a ton of money and people, and more security than even the biggest corporation. All of this makes it willing and able to take the long-term view. But at the same time, people in charge of federal departments have less personal investment in the job. At the very highest levels, political appointees are expected to change with every new president, and at every level I think a mentality of service to the organization is more common in government than in private industry. And of course, there's a huge austerity mentality in government. Fraud and waste exist of course, because government is staffed by homo sapiens, but it's rarely in ostentatious ways. Private industry will splurge on a modern, fancy-looking building or pleasant interior design if they can barely afford it, because private industry recognizes the importance of employee morale and a good public image. In government, though, no one wants to explain to a Congressman with a hardon for budget-cutting why you didn't take the very lowest bid. In government, a bad image is a good message. But then, pushing back in the other direction yet again, it's very easy to justify computers and desks. Obviously, everyone needs to sit somewhere and type on something, right? And it's easy to buy that kind of thing in bulk. Likewise, there's a certain expectation that a government agency will educate and inform people about its domain, so it's not too hard to throw in decorations and miniature exhibits relating to that - even if the building is not generally open to the public.

So the people who work here get a building with floorplans that are simple on paper but very user-unfriendly when you're walking around in them, computers newer than the software on them, private spaces fit for lawyers' offices and public spaces fit for struggling small businesses, and cheap but plentiful art and exhibitions even though no one from the public ever sees them. Bizarre until you think about it.

My mind is blown

Seriously. Apparently I'm not the first person in the world to notice that version control is a problem. Who knew?

I talked with some friends online yesterday and things turned to my griping about that problem at my job and someone mentioned that there's actually quite a lot of stuff like that already out there. In July I patted myself on the back for having that idea. Now that I actually look it up, apparently some kinds of have been around for over 10 years. This is what happens when English majors pontificate about tech issues without deliberate research.

This morning I talked to M., the economist on the doomed project about it. I think one big problem is that people here, if you'll forgive the oversimplification, are dumb. However, he explained that there are a number of other reasons as well. For one thing, the federal government contracts out tech support on five-year contracts. If they didn't think to ask for revision control software when the last contract was signed, they might not be able to get it until the next one. For another, there are all kinds of security issues, since some people here work on classified stuff sometimes. That slows down approval of software updates greatly. You and I might say that open-source software is generally more secure than Microsoft products that haven't got the last couple security patches yet, but apparently the people who matter think differently.

Red-faced

Just a few minutes ago I went to talk to H. about several problems with the doomed project. While we were talking, something came up I hadn't noticed before now. A part of the project that's chiefly my job happens to be scheduled over Christmas. The schedule thinks I'll have seven days to do something, but once you factor in the official holiday and extra days I'll be out, it will be four at the most. I should have noticed this much earlier, or at the very least at a certain meeting yesterday, and it's sheer luck that it came up in this conversation, so I was a bit red-faced about it and consider myself lucky that we came up with a solution.

And then, five minutes later, I hear H. in my boss's office. (It is just on the other side of the wall from my cubicle, so I can hear laughter or raised voices but I can't make out the words of a conversation.) H. is laughing. Heh, um, whoops.

Seriously, nothing to worry about. H. called me when she got back to her desk to say that she had briefed my boss about the schedule conflict and its resolution in neutral terms, and the laughter was when they were talking about something that had happened this morning. And even if they had been ranting about me, well, H. and my boss both make it clear that they're happy with my work overall, so at the absolute worst it would just be an embarrassment. But no one likes to imagine people talking about them behind their backs.