As every parent knows, small children have two stomachs. One gets full up really quickly and that's where the healthy food seems to go. Then when they've sat there for 10 minutes complaining about being full up, the second stomach comes into play and that's where the ice cream ends up. But I thought you said you were full I say, yet there is always room for something they want to eat.
When these children grow up, as adults they'll do the same thing. Especially if they end up working in finance, they might become UFOs or Unbelievable Financial Officers.
As unbelievable as the two stomach scenario is, many companies run their budgets along similar lines. How many of these can you spot?
We're downsizing, but we're taking on contractors.
But aren't contractors more expensive?
"That's a different budget"
We can't afford to send you on a course, there's no money in the budget
But you're giving me a generous layoff package, and with the money I can go on the course ten times over.
"Yes, but that's a different budget"
We need more staff to do the work we keep getting, but the recruitment never gets approved.
There's some consultants coming in to tell the management team the same things that the staff has been telling them for the last 2 years.
"We can afford the consultants instead of more staff, they are funded from another budget"
"I am being held up by slow equipment and hardware. I would be 5% more effective if my PC had an upgrade. This would cost less than 2% of my annual wages and the PC would last for 3+ years."
"The hardware budget is frozen, you'll have to make do on 95% effectiveness even though this costs the company more money".
"The net development costs will be much higher if we cut these corners, the system will be more unreliable and performance will suffer".
"Don't worry about that, we can transfer the costs to the support dept. They have a different budget."
Could all be straight out of Dilbert.
When I do business planning, I add up all the income, subtract all the expenditure and the net result is profit - the bank has no record of what internal budgets I use. In XP terminology, it's the simplest thing that works, and it does the job for me.
The next time the Unbelievable Financial Officer tells you about the multiple budget problem, tell them you've spotted a UFO. It's probably more believable.
By Craig Cockburn, IT Professional from Scotland. Digital Transformation, Agile Management, Politics and Social change
Total Pageviews
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
Having been on hold to the Orange contact centre (I guess that's what you would call it, I might call it a non-contact centre) for appro...
-
An article on how Agile can sit alongside PRINCE2 and where DSDM Atern fits in. In 2007, I put "used an Agile/PRINCE2 development str...
-
The scene: A person on vacation walks into a late night store to buy some nuts. Present: The person, a shop assistant and a selection of ta...
-
Find me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/siliconglen/ Medium https://siliconglen.medium.com/ thanks Craig
-
Buy and sell anything online using Twitter for free. I thought this was worth a try. Twitter has taken off because it is short, simple, eas...
-
Dyson's motto is "100% suction all the time" or "The vacuum that doesn't lose suction". The consumers' asso...
-
Another government IT disaster. 10 years behind schedule, the Dunblane gun register is 'unfit for purpose' . The article also mentio...
-
I've been having a busy time over on the Cambrian House site lately. Check out my profile and the full set of awards I completed last ...
-
Argos (a top 5 e-commerce site in the UK ) reports on its website when you go to buy something: Remember, you don't need to register t...
-
Website Quality Report Follow the link to find out how this idea can allow people to rate bug free or buggy websites and shame buggy webs...
No comments:
Post a Comment