Bad Communication

Bad communication in personal relationships can destroy the relationship as I've found out just recently. I never really thought about how it affected business and corporations until I read about the Challenger disaster. I worked for a large insurance company for the past 15 years and recently began working on "projects" through Project Managers. Now that I look back, I can think of instances where important information was not always communicated properly or with enough emphasis. The Business (the Insurance Company) particularly the VP would decided upon a project. The project would be discussed with who the VP thought were the critical players. Those players, specifically, the IT team would forward information offshore, to India, to have the technical specifications and business requirements typed up. Sometimes, the coding would also be handled offshore. Upon completion, the project would be given to me to test. Since I wasn't always a key player and excluded from the kickoff meeting, I often had to play catch up and try to figure out what the project was all about, what changes were made to the system and why. Through my analysis and from 15 years of Insurance knowledge, I was often able to identify aspects of the project that were not considered and sometimes critical. If only I had been involved from the beginning, unnecessary time and money could have been saved. In my new positon, I recently experienced inappropriate politeness when critical information was needed for a project I was working on with my supervisor. The coder (who actually works for us, not vice versa) refused the provide the information because he takes offense if his work his questioned. My supervisor didn't push the subject and brushed it off as to not rock the boat. I was disappointed that this was the avenue she chose especially since the information needed could greatly impact the project. As for the Challenger, it seems to me that there were so many people who had doubts about the flight and just sat back. What would the seven passengers had done had they had known of the dangers? Would they have got onboard anyway?