"Have everything in writing, complete with date and signatures"
It is possible that the executives won't take it well to all of the formality here (writing and signatures). How would you convince them that this is necessary?
It is possible that the executives won't take it well to all of the formality here (writing and signatures). How would you convince them that this is necessary?
Exeutives are looking at you as the expert to deliver a good outcome. Which means making good decisions, managing expectations and keeping everyone in the loop.
Generally, if it gets to the point of having to dig up who signed off on what, you've already failed. Often you won't even get the chance to dig up those emails, because delivering a bad outcome is enough for execs to write you off without even needing to hear your excuses.
What makes you think they are excuses? Constantly chasing moving targets and not having even one of them agreed upon in writing is heaven for bad execs. I've seen it happen a good amount of times, my colleagues too.
I don't view the "you changed requirements 20 times the last month and I can't keep up with your impossible imagined schedule" statement as an excuse.
Keeping email threads for reference is probably plenty data enough, btw; "signatures" sounds like the wrong approach. Maybe even just summarize the direction given in a wiki document with a change log with time stamps and requesting person, which you can review once in a while, and the sheer length of it might be enough to bring the point across.
> and the sheer length of it might be enough to bring the point across.
This one sadly hasn't been true -- I tried it but I get blank stares and sometimes grumbling about making people read long stuff that I can just summarize to them. Maybe there's a way out of this conundrum as well.
That includes helping the stakeholders come up with a stable set of requirements. Most of the time when teams are dealing with a lot of requirements change, it's because they never captured the true requirements which usually change at a much slower rate.
Secondly, your job is also to manage expectations, so that execs know what the impact of any changes will be when they request them.
Changes aren't an excuse to deliver late or over budget. These parameters are flexible and new targets should have been agreed when the requirements change was requested.
Execs will usually assess your performance without discussion. There is no venue to bring your cache of documents to prove your innocence after the fact.
Reasonable people I easily work with. It's the rest who are the problem.
I've yet to work at a place where meeting minutes, sent out to all attendees post-meeting, aren't sufficient for the same purpose (ass covering & continued adherence to The Plan as originally agreed).
I'm sure signature and date places do exist... but, I'd probably be looking for a new job if I worked at one.
That doesn't preclude them from not reading that email and later telling you they said something completely different, but at that point you should probably be heading for the door anyway.
It’s interesting to see how all responses focus on the signature part as problematic due to its supposed formality. Is this an American work culture thing? I see signing off on an agreement as a signal of professional conduct and reliability.