Who do you trust?

This vendor is supposed to be installing its software and doing work for a local government — and things aren't going well, says a pilot fish on the scene.

Actually, that's putting it mildly. "The IT staff went so far as to tell the CIO that they didn't trust the vendor's project manager," fish says. "He had lied to them and had supplied wrong and outdated configuration information sheets from years ago that didn't match his verbal information or current software versions.

"And each of three different technical configuration conference calls had resulted in different configurations."

Which means the staff techs on the project don't know if they need one server, two or four.

Or which modules are being installed, or if the product names on the data sheet are still the correct names of the products.

Or how support will be handled.

Or whether the vendor will access the database server via a dedicated connection, or if the plan is to connect to the Web server or an application server in the DMZ.

"One tech made some calls to other customers and discovered that this was part and parcel of their experience with the vendor," says fish. "None of the three she spoke to trusted him."

Exasperated staffers write up a point-by-point configuration sheet, the best sense they can make of all the different versions from the vendor's project manager. Their plan: put in front of the PM and have him sign off on it, so the techs can start making some progress.

But before that, they take it to the CIO — who asks if the vendor is working successfully with other clients, including "Customer X."

"The answer was yes," fish reports. "His response was not to send the sheet to the vendor, but to tell the staff to 'do it like Customer X has done it. Since they could do it there, it must work.'

"So holes were poked in the firewall and servers connected as directed — while teeth were gnashed."

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