I maintained a long-term relationship with a European Investment Bank based in Canary Wharf. As part of a team of consultants we had repeat work to maintain and upgrade their ITAM solution. I personally delivered on a 3-week critical project to facilitate a database migration. This involved liaising with lead DBAs to extract metadata from MS SQL, PostgreSQL and Sybase databases for the solution architecture.

This was a sensitive project given the job threat to the existing DBA SMEs. I faced open hostility from one SME in particular who’s tactic was to delay providing information and not respond to emails.

I resolved this with face to face contact, without letting any request go unanswered. I also used low-level escalation to my project sponsor. This did result in a tactical complaint from the SME to the project board, however my sponsor was satisfied with my approach, hitting their 3-week deadline and no fault could be found. I resolved not to make matters personal, which is how I managed to stay focused on delivery.