Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes I find projects that are over organized. There is a good long-term reason for such. It still is a pain for the rest of us.

I recently started working on a project that was over organized. The computer files were arranged by this criteria and that criteria and the other criteria. Related information was scattered in this area and that area and separated as much as possible.

The project wasn’t that big and complicated. It didn’t need all that organization in all those folder chains and such. What a headache to figure out what was what and where and when and how and gosh golly I had a headache.

There was, however, a good reason for all this. The project manager, the person who over organized the project, wanted to impress senior managers with the ability to organize projects that were much bigger. Therefore, the project manager organized this little project the same way a project manager would organize a project that was much bigger.

Okay, I understood the reasoning. Still, I was stuck trying to figure out all this stuff. It all made sense to some folks, but not to me.

Sometimes we have good reason to do things the way we do them. We should also understand that these good reasons are not readily apparent to some other people. They will look at us like we just put mustard on their vanilla ice cream cone. And, for them, we have just put mustard on their vanilla ice cream cone.

What to do? Put up a great big neon sign that states what we are doing and why. Document everything so that those who want simpler organization for simpler projects can navigate the over organization of the simpler projects.

We can do better.