Posts under ‘People’

Everyone understands that moving from being a “doer” of things to being a “leader” of things can be a difficult transition to make. What gets less attention are the transitions that occur as people move from leadership roles in smaller projects to similar roles in larger projects. A number of troubled projects I’ve recently reviewed […]

For earlier parts of this post read : Part 1 – Dismissal, Part 2 – Denial and Part 3 – Disbelief A key question for those leading technology projects is; how do we prevent the Senior Management team from falling into the “Dismissal, Denial and Disbelief” trap? Given the hierarchical structure in most organizations, that […]

For earlier parts of this post read : Part 1 – Dismissal, Part 2 – Denial The dismissal and denial processes create the illusion of progress, but unfortunately behind the illusion lies the cold reality that the project is deeply flawed. Failure to address the underlying issues allows the project`s errors and omissions to keep on […]

For part 1 of this post read “Dismissal” While dismissal is an easy way to bypass dissent at project start up, as work progresses physical manifestations of the underlying problems start to appear. Senior Managers who had dismissed the team’s original concerns often find themselves facing information that shows a worry trend. In a rational […]

Scott Ambler published an interesting survey in 2007. One of the questions asked people if they had ever participated in a project which they knew, right from the start, was going to fail. Of the 538 respondents, 70% answered yes. Even making some allowance for the inaccuracies inherent in any survey, that’s a staggering result. […]

There is a theory that says that where small indiscretions are ignored, larger indiscretions will follow. The theory, known as the “broken window” effect, is most often illustrated using crime as an example. The argument says that if a building has broken windows and those windows are left unattended, the presence of the broken glass […]