No first day .... just yet

Apparently, yesterday's post was premature.

I had my meeting with the CIO today. Everything went pretty well. We will probably restart the project with a formal requirements period, followed by a market study of available technologies (with the help of an experienced consulting group).

However, there are a few things that the CIO wants me to do in relation to the project in the interim. Also, when I requested that the renewed project be led by someone else, he listened to and agreed with my reasoning. But then, he said that he might not have anyone else appropriate to lead the project so that I may still be his best choice.

Fabulous. (grrrrr.....) I spent nine months leading a project that was completely screwed from the beginning by poor requirements and a 'team' that did not feel accountable for the success of the project. Virtually everything that 'we' accomplished was done by me or by much cajoling by me. The people who were slated to support the product after deployment couldn't be bothered to get involved with resolving any issues before deployment. They expected to be handed a perfectly configured and functioning product, that they had no hand in configuring. So, um, how did they think they would know how to troubleshoot any issues? ... Right.

My CIO assured me that everyone would be held accountable this time around and that I wouldn't be left holding the bag on my own.

Sorry, I'm not buying it. I've worked pretty closely with this cast of characters over the last year. I don't see how he expects tigers to change their stripes.

My unit team lead was in the meeting with the CIO this morning. She tried to give me her Pollyanna viewpoint afterwards. She thinks that after I take care of these final little tasks, that I'll at least have a few months to regroup and take care of some other things before the project renews. Also, she was very optimistic about the CIO's perception that he would make it clear to everyone that they would be held accountable for the success of the project. Sadly, she's very Pollyanna-like over a lot of crap that just ain't so.

Hopefully, the several month respite will eventually occur. During that period of time, I plan to keep my eyes on the internal job board. I work in a HUGE organization. There are a lot of IT-related jobs that are not actually in IT. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a way out before I get the albatross hung back around my neck.