Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes projects “lose their way.” Of course that is impossible as what really happens is that people come and go and change their minds.

In government, we had a phrase about projects that seemed to go forever and consume every penny in sight and produce nothing:

They lost their way

Some of these lost projects found their way again. Most, however, continued to wander and eat everything in sight.

Of course all this talk is silly. Projects aren’t real things. Have you ever held a project in your hand? Not the product of the project, but the project itself. Of course not. Projects are concepts. They can’t lose their way.

What happens is that the persons working on the project wander. Persons leave the project to be replaced by new persons. Someone—one of those mysterious creatures that seem to walk the halls when no one is watching—bumps into one of these new persons and says something like,

“Well, you have to understand. The R E A L requirement of that project was X. No one really cares about Y, so you should change direction, forget Y, and work towards X.”

Well, if that is true, the proper course of action is obvious:

Cancel the project and start over with the right project

Some organizations can do this. Some organizations have honest persons who realize what is happening and take logical steps. Many other organizations, however, well, they don’t have persons who are brave enough to be honest and do the right things. They tend to float along the path of least resistance regardless of the consequences.

Persons who float along tend to find themselves on projects that have lost their way. Funny coincidence, huh?