Being a project manager or being involved in managing projects in any way you sometimes have to make some serious decisions which will vastly affect your future work and situation you’ll be in. I’d like to ask you about your decision in a situation described below. Yes, I’m one of people engaged in whole thing but I’ve tried hard to be as unbiased as possible. I’d appreciate commenting if you see me taking any of sides.
There’re two companies, let’s call them Windy and Rocky. Rocky is a subcontractor for Windy in quite a big project for Customer. According to agreement between Windy and Rocky:
• There were three planned parts of payment: on the beginning of the project, after system starts working in production environment and when Customer signs an acceptance protocol.
• Rocky gives half a year guarantee for software they deliver. There aren’t any fixed dates for resolving bugs for Rocky.
• Windy owns a code delivered by Rocky in the project.
The first two milestones in a context of payments were achieved. The system works in production environment, but there is still a bug which restrains Customer from signing the final acceptance protocol. The bug is repeatable at least once per a couple of days and quick fix requires restart of the whole system. The issue is somewhere in code delivered by Rocky. Guarantee for the code is still active.
To make whole situation more complex Windy wants to take over code delivered by Rocky after finalizing the project, so for Rocky it isn’t a very perspective way. Rocky hasn’t yet given their source code to Windy. There’re some pending change requests submitted by Customer, which should be done parallel with fixing the bug. Up to now those change requests were made by Rocky with every time some additional salary agreed for Rocky work.
Rocky doesn’t plan to deliver other projects for Customer, but for Windy Customer is the most important one.
Now, the issue: Windy didn’t pay whole second part of cash for Rocky (and half of the first part too), yet they should already have it done by now. What should Rocky do until cash is paid?
1. Stop any support for Windy, including fixing the bug and developing any of outstanding change requests. Refuse to give the source code to Windy not allowing them to develop change requests on their own.
2. Work only on the bug fix, but not on change requests. Refuse to give the code to Windy.
3. Stop any support for Windy, but give them the sources to let them manage problems on their own.
4. Work only on the bug fix and give the sources to Windy to let them deal with change requests.
5. Work like before fixing the bug and dealing with change requests.
What’s your opinion? Why?
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