- Bench, Body Shop, 'Come to Jesus' Meeting, Documentation
- Dumpster Engagement, Faith-Driven Development, Go Native, Hired Scapegoat, 'Jesus', Non-Solicitation Agreement
- Person, Proprietary Development Methodology, Purple Squirrel, Resource, Smallball
- Transparency, Utilization, Vampire, Waterfall, Yes Man/Woman
- Summary
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Transparency
The act of being honest and forthright with clients, employees, and partners about the progress of a project, the financial health of the company, or other matters of consequence. Transparency thrives in scenarios where participants in a market are engaging in win-win relationships. When information is hidden, the tendency is to use the secrecy as leverage to win rewards that are not due to the person or organization hiding the information. For example, hiding project status information results in being paid for work that isn't really being completed. Hiding financial health information during the interview process deprives incoming employees of risk premium (higher salaries or equity) that they would request in exchange for moving to a less-creditworthy company.
Lack of transparency is generally thought to be the root cause of the U.S. mortgage crisis beginning in 2007, which is the major cause of the global recession being experienced at the time of writing.
Utilization
The ratio, expressed as a percentage, of actual billable hours over total full-time hours (in a year, usually 2080, or perhaps 2080 minus holidays). Typically measured at individual level, office level, and company level.
Vampire
A person who, despite having the appearance of a sales professional, really just siphons the blood (profit) from an organization, leaving about a year later with the organization in a severely weakened state. Such a person usually only pretends to sell. Rather than doing the hard work of meeting clients, finding solution delivery-opportunities, and helping to form teams to capitalize on the opportunity, the vampire comes into a company and tries to make quota by inheriting accounts from other account executives (who, after working for two months with such a person, get disgusted and leave).
The tragedy of having a vampire on board is that this person is generally great at managing the organization (that is, he or she can sell well enough to get in and convince management to let him or her manage some big accounts), but lacks the desire to apply these sales skills to any external audience.
Most good firms can discover a vampire in their presence after 3–12 months. However, the damage done by this point is usually immense.
Waterfall
See "Faith-Driven Development."
Yes Man/Woman
Generally speaking, the "yes man" or "yes woman" is a project manager who reports great progress until about five days before the project ends, at which time he or she goes into the Witness Protection Program and vanishes from the earth. Some of the biggest settlement checks a consulting firm ever writes are caused by a "yes man" working on a project using one of the methodologies that depend on faith-driven development.