Friday, September 01, 2006

Projection controls perception, got you guessing in the art of deception.

I've been thinking, over the last few days, about posting a how-to on project failure. Not because I'm good at projects failing, I just happened to be caught in a downward spiral of despair that is this name-less project.

So I think I'll start with the basics, bearing in mind that my company is a 'partner' with this other company. All that really means is that we charge them to do anything.
  1. Ignore the Statement of Requirement (SoR) from the customer
  2. Write a scope document for the project that doesn't meet the SoR
  3. Don't write a business case at all
  4. Don't assign a project manager
  5. Use software that has never been tested in our environment
  6. Allow 3 equal managers to have their own say in the rollout
  7. Train staff to use untested software 2 weeks before rollout
  8. Allow upper management to blame middle managers for impending failure due to lack of project manager
  9. Allow system administrators to dictate the final project requirement based on their skill set (or lack their of)
  10. Allow middle managers to flee from project as failure is imminent
  11. Tell middle managers that due to the work carried out based on the incorrect scope document, project doesn't meet SoR - and that SoR has to be re-written to match work carried out
  12. (at this point I just sat and stared in disbelief when I was told that)
  13. Realise that software doesn't work on 90% of our hardware 2 days before go live
And that's where we are today. We go live on Monday with a £750,000 project that we know doesn't actually meet anyone's needs.

But I would like to go back to point 11. What this means is that we (the supplier) are going to re-write the customer Statement of Requirement on their behalf. The company that I work for seems to think that by re-writing the SoR for them, it will exactly match what we have done based on the scope document. Thus - we will have rolled out the perfect project.

Does anyone else see the glaringly obvious in all this?

But here is the best part - I've been assigned to re-write the SoR.

(I'm just trying to see how many Public Enemy quotes I can use. This title: Public Enemy, Last Mass Of Caballero)

posted by Wally @ 10:16 am