Shape of... a Pear!

[mangosteen]

A few thoughts on what happens when projects go ugly:

There will be some projects where no one is going to come out okay. It's over time, it's over budget, and every person on it can be validly accused of something unpleasant.

Observation: Everyone can be playing by the rules, and emergent behavior can still screw everyone over, regardless

Comments

[muffyjo]

One of the things I love about my current workplace is that while people are held responsible for their actions, blame is not really part of the company system. Mostly it's "well, this is what we have to deal with now. Let's move in this direction to solve it." Which is novel and amazingly encouraging.

I swear, I never thought this kind of an environment ever could exist in real life.

[sweh]

It's amazing how attitudes change when I say "I'm not trying to place blame; I'm just trying to work out what went wrong and what we can do to fix it". Previously defensive people become very co-operative!

I leave the blame throwing to others.

[fj]

Sometimes it is not even half a notch. If the people you never want to work with again were the Proj/Prog Managers in charge of parceling or structuring or requiring the work, sometimes not pulling the coals out of the fire they created is a very good learning opportunity for them.