The frequently asked question: "Why God, WHY?"

Dear God,

Here I am Father God, with lots of "whys" in my head right now... and I am trying to put my thought together in this post to the best of my ability...

Just about 2 weeks ago I poured out my heart to you about my work and colleagues, specifically on the website revamp project. I thought You gave me solid reason to leave the project team when the management revamped the organisation chart, and I saw the opportunity to distance myself from the run-a-way-train that is clearly heading towards disaster because that colleague refused to budge on letting the vendor do the job. I thought I had the victory... until yesterday. The victory is short-lived. Argh!!! Why God? Why??? SIGH... 

My manager called and spoke to me, telling me the team hit critical bump and cannot proceed without my input and involvement. What input, what involvement, Father? I already done all I can.. what else can I do when that person is not taking responsibility to do his part? I am in no position to tell him what to do, besides knowing that I was backstabbed by him and I am having a lot of things to do on my side and and... and my manager suggested for the tech team to be back in office to re-strategise... sigh...

Father, can I shout till I run out of breath? My chest is very tight, and I am fighting for air... gasp!

So today I went back to office, thinking I can just tell them bluntly I don't want to get involve in the project. I already planned in my head what to say, until I saw the text message forwarded by manager just before I leave my room: "Bro, I can't come office today cuz I slightly injured my feet, hard to walk. Can we conference once KL comes?". I was stumped, speechless. Should I go to office since he's not coming? More questions came flooding into my mind, bringing along anger + frustration + disbelieve + jaw-dropped + all sort of negative emotion reaction to the surface.

Oh God... what lesson You want me to learn from this? Are You trying to prepare me to lead this challenging person to complete the project, as a feather in my resume for my future position? Tough, this is sooooo tough!! I don't know if I am ready to go through the pain of being a leader again so soon...

I then discovered my car park card was terminated since June 2020 when I reached the office. Sigh... Still, I thank You Father, that I can claim my parking fee back. Slightly troublesome moving forward as I heard the entire organisation will no longer give us free parking, and we need to park at the open car park. Just need to make it a new habit to always carry and remember to take my umbrella when I go to office.

So Father, I met with my manager and after he filled in the gaps for me, since I did not attend several project meetings for the past 2 weeks, I drew on the board to see the big picture and what is the project current status. All I see on the board: TSUNAMI ALERT! Sound of emergency alarm blaring out of control screaming in my head... I can hear my head telling me "KL, you have to stop yourself from going further in the project, you cannot get involve, it's a disaster coming really big and you will be in dangerous zone of being blamed and backstabbed again!"

The lead developer colleague had nothing to show the project team he had started the project. Not even a skeleton site or process flow logic drawing while waiting for the final design and content from the Comms team. All I heard from the feedback over and over again was "I am not familiar/I need to do research". Why can't he just admit he can't do the work and tell the truth to everyone? I blurted out to my manager "Sorry, I can't help this project if he is still refuse to let the vendor do 80% and he do 20%". Gasp! What have I done? What did I just said?? What's going on in my head?! I should have just said I still won't come back to the team whether vendor or he do the work... KL, what happened to you?!

Trying to clear my mind, I just shared my experiences in running website development processes with my manager and convinced him to speak to the project sponsor: I don't see the project can meet the March 2021 deadline with the current situation and attitude issue with the lead developer. The project sponsor can see the problem after 2~3 times noticing his various contradicting statement on what he can or cannot do (hmm.. why can't my manager see it when I already told him months ago?), and in turn advised my manager to make firm decision to axe or keep him in the project.

3pm. Steering Committee meeting via con-call. I kept quiet throughout the meeting, observing what is going on and I was most interested to see how the lead developer reply to the questions raised at him. When the project manager shared on the timeline, he spotted "Website development and completion - 7 days". It's actually an oversight on the project manager as she accidently left out the backend development (35 days). He jumped on everyone, raising his voice to dispute the 7 days by justifying he cannot do the job and calling the timeline "crazy, absurd". Project Sponsor told him to take it offline with the tech team but he refused to listen and just kept protesting. I gestured to my manager not to make any comment but to say "we'll take this offline".

We told the lead developer to come back to office tomorrow for meeting, to iron out the issues and to reorganise the plan. I am now very doubtful if he will turn up. And if he turns up, Father God, I need Your help for both my manager and myself to tell the truth to him, that he seriously do not have the capability to carry the project. Unless he buck up, unless You give us the miracles, I honestly don't believe this guy can really do it.

The CEO came over to our island after the Steering Committee meeting, and after discovering the "lame" excuse of the lead developer not turning up for internal meeting in the morning, he sent out an email instructing the entire tech team to work in office until project completion. Father God, how will this work out in the end, only You know. I can only follow Your lead, and Father God, please help me to stand firm in my decision to tell the truth and not backing down from the pressure of pleasing people and I end up suffering in silence, in regret.

Ouch... Backstabbed!

 Dear Father God,

For some reasons from the very beginning I sensed I will face challenging time for taking the small role in my workplace's website revamp project. Today I found out I am being backstabbed and complained against by the lead developer. I was told he questioned my qualification in the web and technical matter and when I'm around, he's totally another person by saying yes when I says something. It sure hurts Father...I don't think I've overstep my role and boundary in this project. Perhaps it's a "time's up" call for me to leave the project team and just focus on my core role as business analyst instead?

The reason I am in this project team in the first place? They found out that:

• I had the experience of building websites from ground up.
• I had the opportunities to lead a team of wonderful people with skills superior than mine to work on massive web development projects for both big and small organisations across different industries. 

Apparently they had signed and tried to work with my former company 2 years back, but due to scope creep, they dropped the work and thus the management decided to do it in-house.

So, what's my role in this project team? It sounded very simple: I'm assisting the project manager and my manager in documenting the user requirement and assisting in overall architecture design especially in backend, besides providing advise as needed. In terms of hierarchy, I'm at the lowest rank and unless I am asked any questions, I won't be able to say anything even if I sensed something is not right. Simple question like "Hi, how's the progress going?" can be seen as overriding or hijacking the role the project manager, my manager and the lead developer, hence I am very careful with my words.

Honestly speaking Father, I do not know the background of this lead developer. I don't know how capable he is in web development. I didn't get to ask him how many years or how many projects he has done before. From the day 1 I met him in office (after the MCO is relaxed for us to return to office), he has been telling me and my manager how good he is and how he is capable to do the task. Sadly Father, I felt that he is lying to everyone. I noticed that he took a very long time to complete a simple programming request. If I may put my experience into that request, an experienced programmer would take at most 5 days to deliver with the help from the vendor who provided the API. Forgive me Abba God for my strong words: that freaking request he took more than 1 month to do, and to my carnal mind I wanted to shout "WTF!" or "WTH!" to him for all the bullshits he said.

With my manager, I suggested to him months before the start of the website revamp project kick-off meeting to get the development server and environment ready, at least replicating the current website's functionality from .NET to PHP since he said he can only do PHP. Even the manager agreed and tried to help him to get the things he needed. Oh ya, he said he will do the architecture design and share with us. Alas, with few more months to meet March 2021's deadline, nothing is here yet. When I was asked to present the project timeline to the management, I can hear their jaws dropped over the Teams meeting. With him as one-man-show, the project will end in July 2021 (provided he don't fall sick, never take leave, and knows exactly what he is doing). I was asked to realign the timeline to March 2021's deadline and to suggest what they should do to expediate the work. I told them the truth: engage a proper web development company to do it and then let our lead developer tag along so that he can take over for maintenance once the new website is launched. Their response? Dropping a coin into a deep well and dropping.. still dropping... helloooooooooo....? "Okay, Mr Manager, please proceed to look for vendor for quotation and report in the next meeting". Victory, yes? Father, I don't know.. the road looked really long ahead with no end in sight...

Father, until today there is nothing from the lead developer on this project. Manager's simple request to list down what he can do and what the vendor need to do often vanishes into the thin air, or is responded with the standard reply for the past few months "I can only do research and try to develop". I told my manager while I can list down every single thing what vendor and he should do, it will be disastrous for the entire team because he will place the blame on us for "making me do it when I don't know how to do". I declined to list the tasks for him.. again playing my "advisor" card carefully.

The last I heard, he started drinking again. The management knew he had this drinking issue and he went into rehab. Everyone thought he's turned a new leave when he rejoined the organisation but... sigh, Father, I won't comment about his problem because I know myself: who am I to judge him. Unless he encounter You personally and really surrender to You to change him from inside out like how I did to my life, his problem will resurface no matter how many times he go to rehab.

I told my project sponsor (this person is whom the project manager reports to) after the timeline presentation that we cannot afford to take risk with lead developer's erratic behaviour. I shared that while we need to love a person and give the necessary support, but when it comes to organisation's interest, we have to put aside emotion and be professional to bring the project to completion. Father God, I don't know how my project sponsor can understand, but I can only hope my message is clear enough for the management to do the right thing moving forward.

Sigh... dear Lord Jesus Christ, please speak to Your daughter on when to resign from this project team? Please help me Your daughter with the right words when I speak, I pray, and may the management accepts my reason to leave the team, in Your Name I ask and pray, amen.