Mary the Director of Marketing at EzSoft co, reads a trade magazine article and decides the company needs a hot new product like the one mentioned there. Does it matter that a lot of it icon practical or applicable to the product lines the company currently sells? Of the course not all that matters to her is that it will create some buzz at upcoming trade shows. She whips together some rough sales projection numbers sells the idea to her boss, Stan, the VP of Sales and Marketing.
A couple of weekends later there is an executive management retreat strategy meeting. Stan and Mary give a quick presentation that relies heavily on the rough pie-in -the - sky potential sales number that Mary had essentially made up. Stan tells them that this is a " must have ASAP" product that has to be ready by a major trade show coming up in 6 months and preferably by the company's national sales meeting in a little over 4 months .Phil , the CEO, is very excited about the potentially high revenue shown in the briefing . He orders Brian, the Director of Software Development, to get the project started right away.
After returning from the retreat, Brian pulls Joe, a development team lead, off the project he's been leading for about 4 months and tells him to get with Mary about a new product ASAP. Joe protests the move by telling Brian that the current project, a key upgrade to the company's core program suite, is merely complete and he has the most knowledge about that complex product. Brain explains that he's giving that project to one of the junior developers to build up their team lead experience. He tells Joe,' I want my best development lead on this new and important project. You are the best, aren't you? That old project is on autopilot anyway, a trained monkey could handle it. Stan and Phil want this new program ASAP and are watching it closely. A high visibility project like this will give your career here quite a boost.'
When Joe tries to schedule a requirements meeting he discovers that Mary was very busy , It takes almost 2 weeks to schedule a meeting with her because she keeps canceling meetings, ignoring emails and voice messages , and is never in her office . Finally, tired of the run around, Joe asks Brian to help get a meeting set up.
After complaining about Joe not taking any initiative, he grudgingly gets a meeting set up with her for about 15 minutes late on a Friday afternoon. She quickly runs through what she wants in rather general terms and then hands Joe her ideas scribbled on a couple of legal pad sheets and a poor photocopy of the article. But, more important to her, she also has images for branding the product's splash screen and about box and a color scheme. She tells, Joe, "Make sure that you have my pictures and in the colors in the program because that's what I will be 'sneak peak' promoting at an industry conference in Jamaica next week."
After the meeting with Mary, Joe has a lot of questions about her off-the wall scribbling and the vogue magazine article. He even questions the practicality of the project as he begins to analyze the information early the next week. He tries to bring this up with Brain but all he want to know why the team, a hastily assembled group of new hires and contractors Joe didn't even interviewing the candidates for the project yet. He tells Joe that Mary him she had given him complete requirements just before she left and that should be all he needs. Brain says "the requirements are in the can, done, don't worry about them."
Joe starts to protest but Brain blows off Joe's complaints about the state of the requirements again and makes it clear once again that the project has top priority. He tells Joe," Mary is an idea person, not a detail person like you. She 's going to be out of the office for the next 10 days so why don't you show a little initiative and write up the detailed requirements ASAP yourself ? She wouldn't know what you were talking about anyway, Take the bull by the horns and get it done! You're a 'can do' person, right? I only want 'can do' people on my team.' Joe agrees that he is a 'can do ' person and tells Brian that he'll get the requirements wrapped up and hold any questions until Mary returns, Brian says, " OK , great , just get the ball rolling."