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.