An Email from Mehitabel. (July 17, 2010)

TFW received the following email from a contractor to one of the major governmental departments. For reasons that will be clear we'll call her Mehitabel*.

      Mehitabel writes:

as you'll realise, i'm dictating this to archy. things are going pretty well - i'm spread a bit thin doing two jobs for the next couple of months as i extricate myself from a contract and bed into my new full time job with xxxxx.

the contract is what i now see as a typical public service project - some activity, not a lot of vision or focus, but it's really about looking busy and being able to say that you're doing something in particular.

 
i finally realised that these projects are all exactly the same - just the supposed outcomes vary - they are all about herding cats, and once you see that and work out whether you are a cat or a shepherd, then everything else falls in to place. my project has no scope, the project manager can't or won't work out what we are trying to achieve but i'm supposed to write operational concept documents.... i began to object until i realised that i'm a cat, so i'm just writing doco - about 150 pages and counting.

toujours gai, kid,

mehitabel

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*See http://www.donmarquis.com/archy/column.html