The Bulldogs
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Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Bulldogs
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I apologise in advance for quoting from, of all things, a Kenny Rogers song. I'll take myself off somewhere private later and punish myself appropriately.
However....
"You gotta know when to hold them. Know when to fold them.
Know when to walk away. And know when to run.
You never count your money while you're sitting at the table.
There'll be time enough for counting when the dealing's done."
Sort of appropriate in this context, isn't it?
There's nothing holy about a project. It's there to do a job, and if it can't, it should be dropped. Any project manager worth their salary should be able to turn around a perception of failure and demonstrate how the timely decision to can a duff project was, in itself, a success.
Semper in excretia, suus solum profundum variat
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Do you have a link to this article in which you referred?
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I completely agree - this is exactly what Prince2 here in the UK advocates. You should assign the project a business case before it starts, and that business case should be checked at regular intervals. If the project stops meeting the business case, it's time to can it.
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... not forgetting Brook's Law
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Steve,
The link to "IT Project Failure" is broken.
On the subject of IT Project Failure... how often is it that IT is the one that "designs" a project? Normally, it's some other group of people who have presented IT with requirements for a project and have dumped it on IT to resolve or, worse, have told IT how to resolve it.
No... I've found that it is Company Management who must learn to fail... they set IT up for it all the time. 😉
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally) -
I agree totally. Part of the problem with the article however is you have the "before the project" starts picture of a bulldog. Cute and cuddly, "Oh this will be a wonderful project, and bring us great value!". You need the "this project should have been stopped last year" picture, the dog with teeth sticking out and a big goob of slobber hanging from his lips.
<><
Livin' down on the cube farm. Left, left, then a right. -
Tobar (6/10/2008)
...the dog with teeth sticking out....Like this?
:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:
Sorry, I'll get my coat....
Semper in excretia, suus solum profundum variat
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Major, that's a great picture! 😛
If it was easy, everybody would be doing it!;)
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Well, I'll admit that if a project of mine started looking like that, I'd pull the plug pretty quickly 😉
Semper in excretia, suus solum profundum variat
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Great article. However, baseless projects are not always about keeping developers happy.
Sometimes, developers are working on a project where they can see the finished product will go nowhere. This is definitly not a morale booster. Situations like this is where project management becomes so critical.
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"nowhere project ... project management critical"?
That seems like getting all dressed up to ride a dead horse. Maybe good project management would be calling for a swift end of the project. That could be what you meant.
Too often projects are about power and turf, if there is improvement or progress also so much the better.
<><
Livin' down on the cube farm. Left, left, then a right. -
Sorry, the link is fixed.
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Yes, that is what I mean. However, you're right - if there was good project management from the start, developers would never find themselves in that situation. I'm thinking more of a situation where a project manager has been pushed onto a halfway-to-completion project that was developed without any methodology, to try and rescue it.
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There was a company that I worked for that had a technology project (not an IT project) that it was trying to establish. The patents and process were bought from another technology company - my company was going to automate the process. They bought a building to house the project and hired hundreds of people. They spent millions of dollars. They could never automate the technology so that they could sell it at a competitive price. At the beginning of the project, the dollar (CAN) was low, the materials were cheap and plentiful. By the end of the project, the dollar was high and due to better recycling capabilities of other companies, the materials were not plentiful at all, and thus not cheap. Sometimes, even a good idea has a window of opportunity - and if you fail to reach the window, you fail to launch the product. Who's fault was this? Senior business & board of directors? The general manager of this division? Project management? Sales? George Bush (referring to the American dollar issue)?
Yup, it looks like George W. Bush did it again ... 😉
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
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