I noticed that Baseline was running an interesting piece on IT Project Failure, looking at who's at fault and what some of the problems are. It's an intresting read and some effort was put into it with quotes and comments from Joel Spolsky and Steve McConnell, two very successful software developers.
How many of you are bulldogs? Do you stick with a project that's not providing business value, especially as costs rise? It's not something that I necessarily see many development, or even implementation, groups doing. Once a project is funded, it usually goes to completion or until it fails; I rarely see someone kill a project at 40%, 50%, or 60% completion.
When do you decide that something isn't worth continuing on with? When do you throw away some amount of effort already being spent, including the emotional attachment that people working on the project have? It's a tough decision, but in reading the article, it does make sense that you periodically evaluate the project and if it isn't still a good business value, you end it.
That's a sign of being willing to fail, which isn't something that I see much of, especially in the US. We're so risk-averse, so unwilling to admit our own failure, that we keep going until someone forces us to stop.
Often I hear that we've spent XX dollars on something and so it doesn't make sense to stop now. But the amount you've already spent doesn't make sense when you re-evaluate the project. The amount that is already spent on a project is spent, no matter if you continue or end the project and it's hard to ignore that cost and base your decision on only future amounts.
However that's what you should learn to do, and learn that it's OK to get emotionally attached to a project, just be able to emotionally let go when it's not providing the value you expected.
Steve Jones
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