Underperforming Assets

Here are two real-world examples where I helped a client diagnose reasons for the subpar performance of their IT assets. They were completely different cases and their causes were also as different as night and day.

 

Fixing a Mismanaged Legacy ETL System

 

In this case, the client knew what the underperforming asset was, a 15-year-old ETL system. But they didn’t know how to fix it. That’s why they hired me. I corrected as many technical issues as I could but the sheer mismanagement of the system was beyond the scope of my technical mandate. Nonetheless, being a professional, I created a detailed post-mortem of the system pointing out all the shortcomings that plagued it and suggested long-term solutions. This was a parting gift, free of charge, done in my own spare time, to give the client extra value. Here is the document:

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My Assessment of a Mismanaged ETL System

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Diagnosing an Underperforming IT Team

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At another banking client, I joined a team that had a reputation for subpar performance compared to other teams in the same LOB. Shortly, a newly installed director decided to find out the root cause of the problem. So he hired one of the large consulting companies to investigate and report back to him. I was the star witness in their investigation. While I was interviewed by them I repeatedly stressed that I didn’t see any people or process or method problems. Yes, there could be some minor improvement, but overall there was no fundamental difference between this group and any others in the LOB that were highly rated. All this was ignored by the junior consultants and, not being able to discover anything else, the blame was pinned on the lack of managerial oversight. Hence a new director from a related group was installed as yet another manager to oversee the group. 

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In the meantime, I came to my own conclusions as to what was ailing my team based on my first hand experience and understanding of what was happening. I concluded it had nothing to do with people or processes, it was a case of bad architecture being promoted and reused over and over again within the team. It caused project delays, cost overruns, code duplication, bug multiplication and so on. Here is my very detailed report as well as the solution to the problem.

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My Architecture Assessment for a Client

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