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If you build software, chances are that you and your organization are using some technique developed by The Atlantic Systems Guild.


August, 2010

the Atlantic Systems Guild
 

This month's pattern: 03 Dead Fish

Each month we plan to publish here one of the patterns from our Jolt Award book, Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies — Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior. (Watch this space for a mere 86 months and you'll have read the whole thing.) The book is published by Dorset House Publishing, in the US and Hanser Verlag in Germany. It is available at Amazon and also as a Kindle book.

dead fish

From Day One, the project has no chance of meeting its goals; most people on the project know this and say nothing.

The goals of many IT projects can be summarized simply: We need this set of functionality, with this accuracy, with reasonable robustness, by this calendar date. The team is assembled, and the statements of goals and constraints are worked into detailed requirements and designs; and they’re published.

The big secret is that nobody on the project believes that the project can be an outright success. Usually, the deadline is not attainable with the other goals unchanged. Mysteriously, no one declares that there is a big, stinking, dead fish of failure already smelling up the project.

As the Greek tragedy plays out, the project will slog on. Then, typically a few weeks before expected delivery, each project member, project manager, manager of a project manager, and anybody standing remotely near the project, will either:

declare shock, dismay, and amazement that the project is nowhere near where it needs to be for the upcoming release

    or,

lay low and say absolutely nothing about anything unless asked

Why do so many people in so many organizations spray reality deodorant rather than simply state, “No way this project is happening the way we want. The dead fish is here.”

Many organizations are so driven for success that anyone expressing doubt gets no reward whatsoever for speaking his heartfelt opinion. In fact, if someone identifies the dead fish in the early stages of a project, upper management’s first response is likely to be

“Prove it. Show us that the probability of success is 0 percent. Draw no conclusions from the other dried-out fish carcasses lying around from previous projects; your project is different. Prove to us with irrefutable mathematics that failure is inevitable.”

Anything short of a masterful proof gets lambasted as whining or an attempt to get out of some good-old, honest hard work:

“Are you a weenie or a layabout? Take your pick, but we doubt you’ll be a part of this fine organization for long.”

In such an environment, it is safer to “try hard” and not make it than to declare goals unattainable as defined. Granted, sometimes it is necessary to take on a very challenging project and give it a real try before conceding anything. Absolutely—but the difference is that on hard projects with real deadlines, nobody waits until the last minute to declare an emergency. If your project is building software for a communications satellite that is set to launch in 18 months—and you know that if you miss the launch date, the next opportunity is 16 months after that—then you and everyone else will be sniffing the air every day, for that aquatic scent. One whiff of that aquatic scent and you will spring into action, knowing too well that on a dead-fish project, action waits until most options are lost.

Clearly, the dead fish is not only destructive to organizations, it is demoralizing to the dead-fish project teams and their managers. No matter what the organizational culture, nobody is ever comfortable sitting on a stinking dead fish for long. The costs of keeping a dead fish secret are huge.


Just for Monty Python fans:

   “This project’s not dead; it’s pining for the fjords!”

   “It’s not dead, it’s just molting!”

   “This is a dead project. It has joined the project choir invisible!”

   “And now for some pattern completely different. . . .”

Image credit: Photo © Byron W. Moore, supplied by BigStocPhoto.


Patterns bookFor more about the book, including sample chapters, table of contents and reviews, action toys, bumper stickers, and free ride passes at GuildWorld, visit our Adrenaline Junkies page.

 


Past Perspectives

xxThe Spring 2010 perspective entitled Simplicity and Requirements was written by Suzanne Robertson


xxThe Fall 2009 perspective entitled What is a System? was written by Tom DeMarco


xxThe Summer 2009 perspective entitled Fear of Failure was written by James Robertson


xxThe Winter 2008/09 perspective entitled IT Financing was written by Tom DeMarco


xxThe Sumer 2008 perspective entitled Groundhog Day Part II was written by Tom DeMarco


xxThe Winter-Spring 2008 perspective entitled Groundhog Day was written by Tom DeMarco


The Winter 2007 perspective entitled Teams Don't Move was written by Steve McMenamin


The Fall 2006 perspective entitled Three Hours to Three Years was written by Peter Hruschka.


The Spring 2006 perspective entitled The Web Undone by Tom DeMarco.


The Winter 2006 perspective entitled Have We Finished Yet? was written by Suzanne Robertson.


The Fall 2005 perspective entitled Adult Behavior on Projects was written by Tim Lister.


The Summer 2005 perspective entitled No Great Leaps Forward? was written by Steve McMenamin.


The Spring 2005 perspective entitled Mastering Software Architectures was written by Peter Hruschka.


The Winter 2004 perspective entitled Early Involvement of Testers was written by James Robertson.


Amazon.com Links from this site to Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk are done using Amazon's associates program. That Amazon.co.ukmeans, that if you use one of the links and end up buying the book, we get a cut. We are not getting rich on this, but thought that you should know that it is happening.


The contents of this site are copyright © 1995-2010 Atlantic Systems Guild Inc. and Atlantic Systems Guild Limited. Material may be reproduced provided this copyright notice is attached and the source is acknowledged. Please pay us the courtesy of notifying the author if you wish to use material from this site.



Happenings


James Robertson presents Mastering the Requirements Process in London, September 13-15. Contact IRM UK Strategic IT Training
James Robertson and James Archer present Mastering Business Analysis in London, September 16,17. Contact IRM UK Strategic IT Training
xxx Vienna, September 22 - 24 Peter Hruschka teaches the 3-day seminar "Mastering Software Architecture" (including the optinonal exam to become "Certified Professional for Software Architecture" (in German). Contact CONECT for details
Suzanne Robertson teaches Mastering the Requirements Process part 2 in Brussels, September 23,24. Please contact I.T.Works for details.
xxx Vienna, Sept. 27 - 29 Peter Hruschka teaches the 3-day certification seminar for requirements engineers (in German). Contact CONECT for details
London, September 28. James and Suzanne Robertson present a tutorial entitled "How Business Analysts can be Innovative when Discovering Requirements". Please see Business Analysis 2010 conference for details and registration.
James Robertson teaches Mastering the Requirements Process in Brussels, October 5-7. Please contact I.T.Works for details.
xxx Vienna, Oct. 11 - 13 Peter Hruschka teaches the new 3-day seminar "Pragmatic Requirements Modelling" (in German). Contact CONECT for details
Leiden, October 20-22. James Robertson teaches Mastering the Requirements Process . Please contact Array Seminars for details.
Suzanne Robertson teaches Mastering the Requirements Process in Rome, October 25-27. Contact Technology Transfer.
xxx Ludwigsburg, Nov. 16 - 19. Peter Hruschka teaches the 4-day seminar "Effektives Requirements Engineering & Management - Die Vorbereitungs zur Erlangung des Zertifikats "Certified Professional for requirements engineers" " (in German). Contact QA-Systems for details.
xxx Vienna, Nov. 22 - 24 Peter Hruschka teaches the 3-day certification seminar for requirements engineers (in German). Contact CONECT for details
xxx The dynamic duo Peter Hruschka and Gernot Starke teach the 4-day seminar "Mastering Software Architecture" in Munich, Dec. 7 - 10 (in German).You can take the exam to become a "Certified Professional for Software Architecture" right after the seminar. Contact www.arc42.com for details
xxx Peter Hruschka teaches the 3-day certification seminar for requirements engineers in Karlsruhe, June 22 - 24 (in German). The (optional) exam to become a "Certified Professional in Requirements Engineering" is held right at the end of the seminar. Contact andrena objects for details

In Depth


Kindle Edition

Adrenaline JunkiesThe Guild's 2009 Jolt Award book, Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies is now available in a Kindle edition.


Kindle Edition

PeoplewareTom DeMarco and Tim Lister's perennially popular book Peopleware is now available in a Kindle Edition.


Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior is now available in Russian. Published by Symbol-Plus Publishing.

Video interview on Requirements with Suzanne Robertson by Robert de Ruiter of Software Release Magazine in the Netherlands.


Listen to parts 1 and 2 of Suzanne Robertson's Interview on Requirements Traceability with Tom Cagley of Software Process and Measurement Podcast (SPAMCAST).



See what all the fuss is about. Tom DeMarco's article in the summer issue of IEEE Software
seems to have annoyed practically everyone: "Software Engineering, an idea whose time has come and gone?"


Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies has won the 2009 Jolt Awards best general book.


The Guild's new book Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies - Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior is now available. Orders at Dorset House Publishing and Amazon.com


NEWS: IEEE Software magazine has selected "Provoking Creativity: Imagine What Your Requirements Could Be Like" by Neil Maiden, Alexis Gizikis and Suzanne Robertson as one of the Top Picks for influential articles over the 25 years of IEEE Software. Download pdf.


See video commentary about the Adrenaline Junkies book project.


NEWS: Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies has been adopted by the Copenhagen Business School for Prof. Rob Austin's course, "The IT Manager as a Business Leader."


The new Guild book has been published in German Adrenalin-Junkies und Formular-Zombies - Typisches Verhalten in Projekten. The book demonstrates the effect of behavior on project success. Please visit Hanser or Amazon.de for more details.


Platicando con Tom DeMarco: interview (in Spanish) with Mexico's Software Guru Magazine. "Creo que todos hemos comprendido que el aspecto sociologico de los proyectos es igual o mas importante que el tecnologico ..."


Suzanne Robertson has written an Executive Report "Requirements for Managing Requirements" for the Cutter Consortium's Agile Product and Project Management advisory service. Download a free copy
The Microsoft Store on Microsoft's Redmond campus will for the first time start carrying books from publishers other than Microsoft Press. Mastering the Requirements Process is one they have chosen to stock in this initial test phase.
The Volere Requirements Specification Template has been translated to Spanish. Thanks to Paul Babic of Smartmatic for the translation. A Microsoft Word version is available from the Volere site.
Suzanne and James Robertson announce the publication of the second edition of their best selling Mastering the Requirements Process
In response to many requests we have started a Volere Requirements discussion group.

Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies - Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior

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