The Warehouse System That Was Already Decided

Choose techniques that surface exceptions quickly and are cheap to repeat:

• Observation (job shadowing) at the dock, especially during peak and during a scanner outage. Staff often cannot articulate workarounds they perform automatically; watching reveals the real process. This directly addresses the bypass problem because it shows you are engaging with their reality.
• Structured workshops with Operations, split by process area (receiving, returns, exceptions) rather than one large session. Timeboxed workshops fit the six-week window and allow conflicting views to be reconciled in the room.
• Document analysis of the workaround spreadsheets, incident logs and the previous system's post-implementation review. These are existing evidence and cost little time.
• Interviews with a small number of key users and supervisors to understand why overrides happen and what triggers them.
• Prototyping or walkthroughs of the vendor's 12 standard workflows with real exception scenarios, to test fit early rather than after configuration.

Avoid large surveys and lengthy one-to-one interview programmes; they are too slow here. Prioritise techniques that produce evidence and expose gaps fast, and record findings as you go so nothing depends on memory.

First, test the claim rather than contesting it rhetorically. Categorise the 40 exceptions by frequency, business impact and whether they are genuinely exceptional or actually routine. Many 'exceptions' may be standard work that the vendor's model does not cover. If oversized pallets occur daily, they are core business, not edge cases.

Then:

• Quantify each category: volume, cost of the workaround, risk if unsupported. This converts opinion into a decision the project board can make.
• Present options: configure within the 12 workflows, extend the product, retain a manual workaround with an agreed control, or change the business process. Each has cost and risk.
• Escalate to the right level - the sponsor and vendor account owner, not the vendor project manager - with a clear statement of the business consequence of exclusion.
• Record the decision and its acceptance in a decision log and, where relevant, a risk register, so exclusion is a conscious, owned choice rather than a silent gap.
• Revisit the previous failure to show the pattern: if the earlier system failed because exceptions were ignored, that is material evidence.

Accepting the constraint is legitimate if the business understands and owns the consequence. Accepting it silently is not.

Treat the bypass as a symptom of not being heard, and respond with engagement rather than process enforcement.

• Meet promptly and listen. Understand what the spreadsheets represent and acknowledge that earlier exclusion of operational reality caused the previous failure. This builds the trust needed for the remaining weeks.
• Give them a defined role. For example, as a subject matter expert or review lead for exception requirements, with a clear route for their input to reach the project. Channel the energy rather than suppress it.
• Make their input visible. Show how their evidence has shaped the exception categorisation and the options presented to the sponsor. Visible influence reduces the incentive to work around the project.
• Agree a communication rhythm - short weekly reviews - so they do not need to escalate by email.
• Address structural causes with the project manager and sponsor: if bypassing is widespread, it usually signals unclear governance or a stakeholder who was excluded from decisions.

Escalation should be a last resort, and if used, framed around project risk rather than the individual's behaviour.