The project I worked on immediately after the one called “Three Letter Agency” (see Blog 4) we will call Project X. Project X was my “reward” for the success of the TLA project. “A new challenge for you, Doug!” my VP said.
I worked for a division of Motorola at that time. That fact is key to the story, or I would have masked it in addition to labeling the project “X”.
We were responsible for a computer/radio subsystem within a larger system.
We were the sub to another company (called the “prime”), who was a sub to us on a similar competing contract. The prime contractor and the government customer on Project X suspected us of trying to ensure the project our company was prime for would somehow ultimately win out over Project X, so they looked on everything we did with skepticism. Needless to say, this made my job as PM less than a barrel of laughs. It is when I learned a person can function with a chronic headache, and where I learned many of my diplomatic skills. Feeble attempt at humor…
Even though we worked for Motorola, we had designed an Intel 486 into the Engineering models. The customer always wondered why we didn’t push for one of the Motorola 68000 series microprocessors. We were engineers, we had no agenda other than technical. The Intel processors were better matches to the overall system requirements. Might sound weird, but that is the truth.
Then we heard about the Pentium. Without using much (any?) emotional intelligence, I allowed the enthusiasm of our engineers to talk me into creating a demonstration of the functionality in the system of what was at that time a brand new Pentium microprocessor. Without asking the prime contractor or otherwise announcing what we had done, we showed it to a visiting Government customer when he stopped by.
The Pentium was so much better than the 486 (although it used more power) that it seemed obvious to us that a change to the Pentium should be made NOW, and we pushed for that with the Government customer, who then went to visit our Prime contractor. Of course, all Hades broke loose, because there was no trust on the team.
I know I should have worked through protocol, through the chain of command. I can only say we were incredibly busy and I have always had a blind spot when it comes to asking for permission when something seems obvious. That comes across as arrogance sometimes, something I have tried to modulate over the years. Not too successfully, I suppose.
Somehow, they imagined a plot to reopen the debate on the microprocessor choice for Project X, and thought we were maybe going to try to push a Motorola processor into the project. WHY we would use the Pentium as the wedge to make that happen still seems a bit weird to me, but there you have it.
After a whole bunch of blustering, screaming, hurt feelings and otherwise testosterone-based chest pounding, the change was made to the Pentium. From a technical standpoint, it was beyond a no-brainer.
The message phase of the story (requested by a prominent member of my editing team):
(1) The effect of the lack of trust on the team is what I am trying to demonstrate. I will discipline myself to not comment on how the weirdness of such a contractual situation might have exacerbated the situation.
(2) We were overly focused on technical detail. As PM, I particularly did not act very smart (maybe still numb from The Three Letter Agency contract). Also in my role as PM, I suppose I was point man for political conniving, but I wasn’t conniving at all when we showed the demo to the customer. Too smart by half, or something. Maybe too dumb by half.
(3) The irony of the whole thing is beyond my power of description, and still amazes me to this day.
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