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All is forgiven on delivery

To my customers I beg your forgiveness.  I know I am hard to deal with.  I am demanding, unrelenting, and all too often I break most if not all of the rules as you knew them.  But that's not really important.  What is important is delivery.  Getting out tools to help real people do their jobs. 

During a recovery effort things seem chaotic on a good day.  From the leaderships perspective it's all moving too fast.  I am frequently told the same things project after project... The First: "You just don't understand."  You just don't understand THIS environment is different.  You don't understand the people, the politics, the constraints, the demands... the list is seemingly endless.  And it’s right, well at least at first.  When I am new I don't understand but the things I don't understand are a bit different.  I just don't understand how they thought they were going to deliver with the process, the overhead, the team on hand.  I don't understand how they can see the effort expended and not see the waste or the level of effort the team is enduring just to hold fast and not fail right now.

Next: "You can't do that here."  You can't do iterations on a $100 million government project.  You can change the test metrics. You can't reorganize the hierarchy into matrixed teams.  You can't ... but I do.  All of this is repeated in my head with a minor twist.  In head I hear ... If you don't change the same result is the only result possible.  If you don't change you can't get better.  If you don't change you can't deliver.

I am, if nothing else, an agent of change.  I get to buck the system because I have a job ( a darn good one too... but that’s another story) and I don't care if they fire me.  I get to say what the team knows and lacked a platform to speak from.  I get to make demands on the promise of delivery.  Therein lies the rub... delivery.  As long as you deliver, all is forgiven.  You just need to deliver often, deliver well, and deliver consistently.