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.
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.
Image credit: Photo © Byron W. Moore, supplied by BigStocPhoto.
 For 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
 The Spring 2010 perspective entitled Simplicity and Requirements was written by Suzanne Robertson
The Fall 2009 perspective entitled What is a System? was written by Tom DeMarco
The Summer 2009 perspective entitled Fear of Failure was written by James Robertson
The Winter 2008/09 perspective entitled IT Financing was written by Tom DeMarco
The Sumer 2008 perspective entitled Groundhog Day Part II was written by Tom DeMarco
The 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.
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| 
Vienna, September 22 - 24 
Leiden, October 20-22. 
Ludwigsburg, Nov. 16 - 19. 
Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies has won the 
Platicando con Tom DeMarco:
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.
