How to tackle tasks beyond the scope of your skills/knowledge?

Question

If you are the lead programmer at a company and you need to complete a project that would require skills/knowledge that no one at the company currently has, what do you do?

I am not talking about something simple you can ask for help on stack-overflow for but for complex problems that you do not feel comfortable tackling and would take a significant amount of learning to be ready.

So at the point whats the best step to take?

Answer 1

You have to take it outside the company to someone (person or consultancy) that can complete it. This means a contractor/consultant that will be with you for a temporary period of time. If possible have them work in house with your and your team and make part of their responsibility to train you.

You may have to explain to management that without this, the project could fail and will probably be late and over budget. Don't worry about outsourcing some projects - you and your team will still have lots of work.

Answer 2

Temporarily hire someone who has the expertise you're missing, and make sure they're prpared to transfer their knowledge to others in your team as well as work on the problem at hand. Be prepared to pay serious money; but if the problem really is complex, chances are you'd take much longer, get a much worse result, and pay more overall if you try to figure out out without any help.

Answer 3

1. Be honest with your management team, make sure they know. Don't ever try to mislead people about the scope of your knowledge - it doesn't impress them and only causes you problems.
2. Work with your team to evaluate your options - it may be possible to change technologies, or perhaps someone else in the organization can help mentor or support you. Changing course earlier on is easier and less expensive than later.
3. Adjust your project timeline to take into account the potential risk and delays caused by working beyond your core strengths. If you don't have enough knowledge to estimate the risk, be very conservative in the confidence factor of your estimates and timeline.
4. Look for an expert in the domain/technology and see if you can engage them either as a consultant or advisor on your project. Nothing makes a bigger difference than prior experience in a domain.
5. Take some time to try to create a simpe prototype or proof-of-concept in the domain/technology you will be working on. Look for possible issues that could emerge. Sometimes unexpected problems surface when you try to create a simple prototype - this can help steer the effort when working on the real thing.
6. See if the scope of your project can be scaled back. If you are already "behind the curve" the best way to improve your odds of success is tackling something smaller, rather than larger.
7. Seek out advise from people you trust. Especially people whose expertise and knowledge has some bearing on the problem or technology you're taking on. They may be able to give your more specific advise or ideas.

Answer 4

First, +1 to Borgwardt, Oded, Bushkin. Great answers here. Now my two cents...

Your path forward should consider whether this is a skill/technology i.e. "capability" that your company needs to have internally. Depending on this, take the advice of either @Oded (Outsource) or @Michael Borgwardt (hire a contractor to do some knowledge transfer), or spend a lot of time (if you have it) and develop the capability on your own. For example, suppose you're going to interface with some purchased package that spits out magic numbers in some binary format. Hire a contractor to write the interface. Suppose your VP of fulfillment wants you to interface with a FedEx web service, and nobody at your company knows SOAP. And you know that more SOAP is coming, for all suppliers and partners. You'll need SOAP skills in-house, so get some training, do a prototype, and maybe bring in some outside help.