How To Assure Project Failure

Today I fancy a look at the wonderful world of project failure. Care to join in?

Long And Boring Please

Create a project management plan with the goal of being long enough that no one will ever read it. Do this with the rest of your project documentation as well.

What the heck, start keeping a tally of what your P/S ratio is. That’s # of pages of project documentation per staff member.

Highest one wins!

These Aren’t The Processes You’re Looking For

Be sure that all processes are as confusing as possible. Be sure to add “quality checks” in as much as possible, to ensure everyone knows they can not be trusted. If you can think of the slightest possibility of a deviation from the process, re-engineer the whole thing to suit that imagined rare scenario.

People will love it.

Make Change Hard

If you make the change management process confusing enough, with long enough cycle times, you can minimize the use of the process. This will likely mean that necessary changes get made anyway, and by the time the process catches up it’s already been implemented. At which time, the change will be rejected and another change request will be submitted to undo the work which has already been implemented.

Comedy gold.

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