Retraction

Buck has been informed by one of his faithful readers (hereafter known simply as "The Professor") that the last installment of his continuing adventures had a more bitter tone than usual. After further review of the blog entry in question, Buck is forced to agree with The Professor.

Additionally, Buck notices that the overall structure of the entry is completely inconsistent with the chronicles' hallmark narrative, third-person format. Therefore, in an effort to right this wrong, Buck submits the following entry intended to convey the same information as the previous one, except that the new entry will follow all the conventions of the idiom as established over the history of this blog:

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"Suddenly," wrote Buck from his desk, a desk which exposed both his back and his computer screen to the scrutiny of his client, "the client called Buck and a fellow consulting associate into a conference room. Pleasantries were exchanged: the client was about to take a three-day weekend vacation to a distant metropolis, and the consultants were politely questioned about their own weekend plans. In a bid to discourage any requests that might compromise his weekend freedoms, Buck made sure to mention that he did, in point of fact, have extensive plans. That his plans were frivolous and easily rescheduled he neglected to mention.

"The client shut the door, sat down and immediately underwent a complete personality change. He proceeded to launch into a sarcastic tirade, for lack of a better term."

Here Buck struggled for a moment, certain that the English language offered a noun more apropos than "tirade," especially since the client's voice remained calm throughout, despite the hostile undertones in plain evidence. Since no such perfect word was forthcoming he elected to give up and move on, after a furtive glance over his shoulder to ensure that he was not being observed. "The client spoke of the project (actually it's a program) in a curious way. 'Let's pretend for a moment,' he began, 'that there's a project, hypothetically speaking, and let's pretend this project's name is Smackdown.' "

"Buck bristled with anticipated rage, for 'Smackdown' was the actual name of the project*, not a hypothetical name at all, and the client was engaging in sarcasm, a tool he had historically proven to be clumsy with at best. It meant bad news for Buck and his friend, for the client had adopted the kind of tone one takes when chiding errant young children. He was treating the consultants like little kids, serving up a dis [sic] of cold scorn with a side of utter disregard for peoples' feelings. He proceeded to rant about the 'health' of the project and complained that he shouldn't be telling them about it, but they should be telling him. To professionals such as Buck and his colleague, this went without saying, it being part of the established principles and dogma of program and project management with which they had been programmed. And what the client was proclaiming hadn't happened, i.e., that the consultants hadn't been forthright in providing him important information about the health of the program, had actually happened on many occasions, but the client had a way of not hearing what he didn't want to hear. He was also deliberately withholding critical information so that he would have an opportunity to make the consultants appear ignorant and incompetent, and he unintentionally exposed this fact during his monologue.

"Buck was not the target of the lecture," he wrote of himself in the third person. "He was just a guy who would have to deliver one of the slides of the PowerPoint deck that this whole attack was intended to elicit. The major things the client was complaining about were squarely the responsibility of Buck's partner, the PMO Project Manager. Why the client had decided to slam the poor guy in Buck's presence was beyond comprehension, especially given the context that the client's own managers and peers were absent from the room. Why attack a guy who is supposed to be helping you? Why attack your consultant, who is your advocate, when there is no political ground to be gained, no one present who can witness you pinning the blame on the outsider?

"It's not like the client didn't want consultants around," Buck continued, almost but not quite certain that nobody was watching him. "By contrast, it was this very client who had wanted to bring in the team of consultants to begin with to help him manage a disparate group of people who didn't want project management practices employed at all. The PM consultant was on his side!

"Worse," raged Buck, "the client had put the consultants in an impossible position, requiring just two of them to institute the entire program and project management infrastructure (bearing in mind that the program includes well over 100 people), execute against it, perform in the roles of what would normally be eight people, all while trying to deliver against an inherently ridiculous time line in a culture where the performers resented the program leadership and, as fate would have it, didn't even report up to that leadership! It was an enterprise doomed to fail, and Dickless knew it."

"Is this true?" asked the seductive and always alert Mrs. 99.

"Yes it's true," replied Buck. "The client has no dick."

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Buck would like to extend special thanks to The Professor for calling Buck out on the quality of his earlier post, and also to the writers of the movie "Ghostbusters" featuring Bill Murray for inspiring the climactic punch-line.


* "Smackdown" isn't the real name of the project either, but Buck protects his anonymity from the client, just as Clark Kent doesn't go around telling Lex and his buddies that his real name is Kal-El and that he likes to dress up in bright, flashy tights.