From: Memmer, Richard
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2023 9:28 AM
To: [manager1]@ecolab.com; [manager2]@ecolab.com
Subject: some end-of-year thoughts

Note: Manager1 hired me and Manager2 is in charge of project. Additional formatting and graphics added in for this post.

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Hi, [Manager1] and [Manager2].

Regardless of what I have to share, every mistake I made this year was avoidable and my responsibility. That aside, prior to Purolite, I recall [Manager1] saying in a meeting that I was going to taking on development from that point on (with a redesign to improve on prior development that was understandably put in place quickly to meet the demands of the project). I was surprised when Purolite came and that didn’t happen. [BA] should be doing what she does best, and I should be doing the same. Prior to this job, I would have spoken up about this — as proper allocation of resources is in everybody’s best interest. As my input has not been welcomed too many times throughout my career, I let that get in the way of speaking up here (where I believe it would have been welcomed). [Manager1] told me from the start that she wanted me to take an active role in driving the direction of the databases, and when she brought that up about Purolite — I thought that time had come. I don’t understand what changed, but my sentiment at the time was to go with the flow of what ECOLAB wanted. I had become more relaxed and just let it go (which is not me at all).

What you’re seeing now is the person you paid for. I’m doing things now in ways they should have been done from the start — much more systematic (which takes some upfront investment in design but pays off in eliminating mistakes). But just when I’ve gotten that going recently, that exclusions document took over my time (and rightly so given that [BA] will be gone). But the more I’ve gotten into this, I now realize what a HUGE mistake I made in not devoting some serious time to that from the start. Once again, I am kicking myself for failing to understand exactly what [BA] was doing with all this from the get-go. But I had no idea of the scope of this project early on.

And while she asked me look into it, I don’t understand why this thing wasn’t a priority for your operation on day one.

I cannot overstress that ECOLAB’s mistakes do not absolve me of mine, but going forward we need to take a hard look at how we’re doing things on this end. I’m kicking myself for the frustration I have caused [BA], but the only way to do right by her and ECOLAB — is to do what I’m doing now. Emailing requirements and on-the-fly changes were fine from the beginning, but given the scope and scale of this project — we should have stopped that a long time ago. Ideally, we should be using something like JIRA. Whatever tool we choose, we should be more methodical about it. And we can do by that by [BA] focusing on what she does best. I will be happy to do teach her everything I can, but she’s not had time to advance her SQL skills much (so she’s mainly relied on her experience from Access). As my career revolved around Access in the early years, I completely understand that (and I still respect that tool). But part of the purpose of going to another platform like SQL Server is to harness the advantages that come with it — and we haven’t come anywhere close to doing that.

I’m going to automate that Exclusions document (and have already put the shell in place for doing so). Of course, to confirm the automation, I will manually do it as well. I put that shell in place weeks ago (and the foundation for that months ago). Once I finish the manual production of the files, I will return to the automation and have it done by the end of the year. In any case, by failing to comb through the document early on to understand how it fit into everything, I neglected to put more of a priority on it. From the get-go, I should have been intimately involved in that entire process (so that I could replicate it and then automate it to whatever extent possible). I know that now (as I’m keenly aware of everything else I should have done). But for everyone to learn from this (and improve on our processes going forward):

You both need to know — and communicate that to [BA] however you see fit.

I hate to end the year on sour note, but I don’t look at it that way. To me, this is what we should be doing to fix what went wrong and improve. It is my recommendation that until BA advances her SQL skills, she should document the business logic in her views and anything else needs — and I take it from there. As we go along, I’ll guide her on everything I do to whatever extent she wants to learn. As she gets better, she can take on some development while following my lead. [She] is exceptional and I wish I would have had her on every project I’ve ever been on. She did what she thought was best and with the best of intentions — but if she really wants to learn, she should be looking back on all this as well. Once again, the fact that she wasn’t more vocal about that document doesn’t excuse my failure to thoroughly examine it from the get-go. But I don’t understand why she didn’t just go to [Manager1] to make it official from the start. Beyond a few phases, nobody should be enduring a manual process like that for a project of this nature.

One final thought: By having me do all the development, that involvement intrinsically improves my understanding of the business requirements (and that understanding lends itself to proactively seeing what other improvements can be made).

Thanks for your time and thoughtful consideration.

Merry Christmas!

Rick