Appointing one neutral party to broker these exchanges can help break the inevitable deadlocks. The general contractor need not manage any of the various teams; in fact, it’s better that he remain neutral. His job is to serve as the channel between the users and the various branches of IT, providing a play-by-play of the crisis, translating technical diagnoses into something closer to the users’ language. He’s the cowboy who corrals the befuddled IT herd, driving them to a resolution…or, at the very least, keeping them from gathering in the hallways or in front of cubicles as they are apt to do, muttering to themselves and scratching their heads while they summon enough collective brainpower to get things fixed. The bigger the herd, the bigger the problem.

Users are terrified of IT herds.

Of course IT budgets are tight, so appointing a full-time general contractor may not be practical. He could be a Help Desk employee, or a systems engineer, or a programmer – he need only be a very good communicator. But in the role of general contractor he also needs some authority, including the freedom to escalate matters to management’s attention when a push is needed to get things moving, end finger-pointing, or deliver bad news to senior management if things go from bad to worse.

Our home remodeling project was eventually finished. Like most IT projects, it took much longer and cost more than expected, but for all the frustration, noise and grime, we’re happy with the results. We’re already planning the next round of updates, and we’ll use the same general contractor. He may not have always had the answers, but he listened sympathetically and was always in control. Or, at least, he seemed to be.

Not that I would have known better.