I am a resource being fought over by several business units. Boss can’t provide clarification on what I need to be doing

Question

I’m one of 10 software developers within a government organization. We support the 30 or so pieces of software that keep the organization running and build new software to ensure that we can continue to service our citizens. Some of those software pieces have multiple client organizations across North America.

The people assigned to work with them range from software developers to people who do DB reporting, but are used to GUI tools and think that SQL is a wrapper.

We provide most of the technical support for all of these various people.

The problem is that all these various people want to dip their hands deeper into the developer pool of resources and nobody seems to know what should be prioritized.

It isn’t a matter of getting more work done as 1/4 of the work is sitting in meeting so they can get developer input “just in case” or providing an immediate solution to the person who couldn’t be bothered to read the manual and decided to instead repeatedly call my Skype and will just call and call and call until he gets an answer. I can’t work my way out of it by working long hours.

My main problem is this:

I am assigned to three projects.

1. Building a new application for one of our business units. This is a major production application which will take two years to build with current theoretical resources.
2. Building a new (much smaller) application for another one of our business units. This should just have been a few weeks but stakeholder meetings drag on and on and on.
3. Supporting two of our existing applications. Support is defined broadly as per above.

The product owner for project 1 insists that I was promised to her full time. Her manager also agrees that promise was made. As a result, I should, in her mind, be 100% available to work on her project.

The product owner for project 2 insists that her project has the highest ROI and should be prioritized. She also claims that she is only getting half the developer resources promised and thinks that she deserves 100% of me as well as another developer. She also wants me in the endless stakeholder meetings (mostly doing other stuff on my laptop). Problem is, those meetings overlap with project 1.

Finally, the support calls come in randomly and people want their answer NOW. They just won’t stop calling my Skype or my office phone until they get an answer because they want it NOW. When I need to do deep work, a colleague and I call each other and just leave the phones off the hook so they get a busy signal. They still light up Teams, but that can be muted. None of these calls are urgent. They are all SQL reporting from employees who need every select statement written for them.

My manager doesn’t know what I should be prioritizing as it was his predecessor who made all the promises to various people. He just said “realize you will piss people off and know you won’t get fired.”

I find this answer unfair to me as I have to deal with the angry people. I told my manager this as his answer was a factious “come up with a script to automate his job and I’ll nominate him as a wasteful expenditure.”

His manager keeps promising to figure out a solution (I asked two months ago), but never gets back to me even though I ask every two weeks.

What would you do in this situation? I’m mostly trying to figure out how I should prioritize my work/meetings attendance.

Answer 1

Your manager appears to want you to set the priorities yourself.

If no one will tell you what the priorities and boundaries are, write up a document laying out those priorities yourself. Be sure to include estimates of time and effort you will spend per week in each area. Then, run it by your boss. If he doesn't like the priorities you've picked, incorporate his feedback and resubmit. Do this until he's mostly OK with it. This forces him to provide guidance and signoff to your priorities.

Once that's done, you share your established and approved boundaries with the 2 product owners. They won't like it. They will push back. Hold firm. After all, you have your boss's buy in. He already said he expects people to get angry and that you won't get fired. As long as you are polite, firm, and professional, you will probably be OK.

As far as the support workload. Do you have any kind of ticketing system? Get one. A paid one is probably best, but there are free options available. Make users enter support tickets into an actual system before you will help them. Do not help anyone who refuses to do so. A ticketing system will allow you to prioritize work based on actual (rather than perceived) importance and to provide clear metrics as to how your time is being used.

Answer 2

One option that I have used in the past is proposing a priority list based on the resources (including time) that are available to me and informing my manager as such. Giving a deadline for feedback requires that either your manager adjusts your priorities or accepts the priorities (either by not responding by the deadline or explicitly accepting the priorities). This usually encourages the groups that are not selected to escalate the issue to levels which will get the problem actually addressed.

Example email below (Email as a mode of communication is critical so that you have paper trail when the parties who are mad about the time allocation complain):

"Hey Boss,

Further to our conversations on Insert Date regarding my allocations as a resource, my proposal is to allocate my time as follows:

1. 70% Project 1 (Resource was promised 100% but project 3 requires 12 hours per week)
2. 0% Project 2 (High ROI [Return on Investment] proposed for project, however no directive to proceed, please reach out to project owner if you need more information on this project and the project's ROI)
3. 30% Project 3 (During typical weeks I am consumed on average 12 hours for this task. Reduction in this project will require either more resources in our department or a better method of ticketing requests for support).

Please let me know if you would like for any of these priorities to be adjusted given corporate goals. I will be informing the relevant stakeholders on Insert a date approximately a week out, of my time allocations for the various projects.

Thanks,

confusedfocus"

After sending this proposal and after the deadline for feedback has past or your manager has agreed to your plan, email SEPARATELY both project owners to explain the time allocation permitted to their project. Copy your manager on these emails. The reason for emailing separately is so that the project owners are required to discuss with your manager the prioritisation rather than fighting amongst themselves.

The benefit of this method is that it forces your manager to prioritise the projects, and if they do not, you will prioritise the projects as you wish. I generally ensure that I prioritise the projects which excite me the most if no one is giving me a clear definition of top priority.

Note: Having documentation which supports the time allocation required per week for project 3 would be beneficial to support your proposal.

Answer 3

My manager doesn’t know what I should be prioritizing as it was his predecessor who made all the promises to various people. He just said “realize you will piss people off and know you won’t get fired.”

What would you do in this situation? I’m mostly trying to figure out how I should prioritize my work/meetings attendance.

You were already told the correct answer.

When faced with a question of competing priorities, and when you aren't able to satisfy them all simultaneously, you turn to your boss and ask for guidance. The guidance here was basically "figure it out yourself".

So, you have been told to prioritize the requests however you wish. Do that.

Sometimes we can juggle many projects at once. Sometimes, we can't. If you can't, then you must act.

In general, it seems to make sense to work on the more immediate needs than the ones that won't come to completion for two years anyway. But you are closer to the situation, so you get to decide based on your own sense of what is most important.

Answer 4

1. Building a new application for one of our business units. This is a major production application which will take two years to build with current theoretical resources.

2. Building a new (much smaller) application for another one of our business units. This should just have been a few weeks but stakeholder meetings drag on and on and on.

First off, what was actually promised? Is there proof of this promise? Email, IM chat, meeting notes ... If so, was this previous manager who made the promise fired/let go/forced to resign? If so, you may want to have a meeting with both teams and have them work out the priorities because at this point the previous manager made promises that could not be met and that may be part of why they are gone now. It also appears your current manager is unable to make decisions for the team. This is also a hurtle to get over, but as I said you may want to try to set up a meeting and go over the projects and get an agreement recorded.

If the previous manager left on good terms then you still want to get a meeting going but will not have the excuse that the previous promises were set up with someone who could not manage time frames. You will still need to bring up that both teams cannot have 100% of your time, so a priority needs to be worked out between them and likely their Associate Director/Director as both teams management appear to think they deserve 100% of your time.

Situations like this come up. It sounds like you may be understaffed for the workload, but that is common these days.

As for the 3rd project/support this is just something that is supported in-between task or as needed. Unless it is a work stoppage situation, I have always dealt with supported software as I had a few min here and there in-between projects.

In the end however you will have to establish with your manager how to handle this and future projects and what takes priority and when. If your manager cannot do that I am afraid you may have a hard time going forward.

Answer 5

Your boss has dumped it into your lap when he said "“realize you will piss people off and know you won’t get fired". So if boss doesn't want to manage your time, fine. Decide what you think is best, then go do it. If it was me I'd A) refuse all the waste-of-time meetings, which probably means all of them; B) work on the smaller project, so that something gets done; and C) tell your boss to hire a support person, but I'm not you. I wish you all the best.

Answer 6

Call A Meeting

Who doesn't like meetings? After all, you already mentioned spending a lot of time in them. Gather all the stakeholders (including your boss and skip-level, if appropriate) who are demanding your time, invite them to the same meeting, explain that you would love to help everyone and do a fantastic job, but there is only so much of you to go around, and would everyone please discuss the go-forward options? Now, this sounds like nothing more than an opportunity to make some popcorn while other managers engage in a no-holds-barred cage match for a scarce resource. And quite possibly, it would devolve into that with no extra encouragement.

However, this will only work if you go into it with a good-faith intention to get to a solution. Ideally, the stakeholders will realize that there are competing claims that cannot all be satisfied, and that it is, on some level, their responsibility to resolve this conflict, not yours. Even so, you can grease the wheels by proposing an allocation of your time to the projects, as the other answers suggest. But I would only use this as a last-resort deconfliction if the meeting reaches a stalemate, or you have a strong personal preference.

Use Your Leverage

Use the main part of the meeting to discuss the project allocations, but leave support out of it (because presumably, support won't be championed by a single manager/team that will argue for 100% of your time like the product managers will). If they get to a point of agreement on your project allocation, then you drop the bomb on them and say: "Well, this is sounding very good, and I'm glad we were able to find common ground. But there's one more problem: I spend an inordinate amount of time fielding support calls which would be...perhaps better handled by, say, a junior developer/intern/contractor? Anyway, my support obligation eats into project work, so I just wanted to make you aware that we need to adjust all these allocation numbers down by 40% or more." No need to mention that you leave your phone off the hook, etc.

At this point, expect the PMs to flip out again. But this time, they will be united, because they now have a common enemy. Between themselves and your boss, my guess is that someone will figure out a way to offload some to most of your low-level support calls onto a different resource, leaving you as the escalation point for the "real" support work. But the trick is to make someone else fight this battle for you. If you really are a contested resource, then they will be all too happy engage in a deathmatch to either get a new support resource, or to just dump the work onto someone less valuable (to them).

A nice bonus is that you'll learn a lot about your boss just watching how he reacts to the whole event.

Answer 7

Everyone here is recommending you make a list of thing to prioritize but I don't think this scales very well as its just going to chew into your time creating this list and this also doesn't stop the constant bickering, calling and meetings your still going to be dragged into.

Instead, I believe you need a BA (Business Analyst) to help you manage the business for you. Its pretty simple. The BA acts as a middle man for you. They attend meetings, talk to the business and figure out the requirements (which they pass to you). This layer of abstraction has several benefits.

1. You get the requirements. No meetings or fuss (unless high level)
2. Communication to you is filtered by the BA who deals with the business
3. Expectations are managed by the BA who will talk to the business and you to determine an appropriate time frame

This way you can focus on developing and bug fixing, and the BA can handle everything else business related.