Why Big Projects Often Have Problems

Posted by Robert Merrill on April 6, 2011 under Software teams | Be the First to Comment

This popped into my head the other day, and stuck. I need to examine this carefully. Does it really hold up, at least in my experience and that of others? If so, can something useful come out of this idea? So, expect this post to change. I’m thinking out loud a bit.

Big projects cost lots of money.

The presence of lots of money attracts people who love money.

The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.

Evil causes problems.

I can’t recall reading a software development or management book that didn’t assume that people are trying to Do The Right Thing, and that the problems project teams get into were the result of increased complexity or ineffective ways of working together.

But if I’m trying to help clients’ projects and businesses succeed, and I’m overlooking a critical factor, I need to consider it, even if it is impolitic to do so. As a consultant, that’s sometimes my job—to say what every insider knows but is afraid to say. If I get fired, I’m only losing 1/4 or 1/2 of my job, not the whole thing, so I’m expected to take chances.

It’s generally agreed that big projects are more likely to have problems. But what about this notion of big money, and evil? Let’s look at it, one line at a time, and see if there’s anything useful.

Return often. This is a work in progress. I’m thinking out loud, and I welcome your (useful) participation. Read more of this article »

Biotech a late adopter of project management?

Posted by Robert Merrill on September 8, 2008 under Biotechnology | Be the First to Comment

Biotechnology, pharma, and the like are among the last adopters of the concept of project management as a discipline, according to UC-Irvine, which is launching a Certificate in “Project Management for Life Sciences.”

It’s going to be a challenge. Says author Kathleen Ryan O’Connor,

When you are working on an invasive medical device like a heart valve, you’ve got chemists involved, you have fluid dynamicists, mechanical engineers, you’ll have people in material science who spend their life worrying about and thinking about how does the human body react to the implantation of these devices, and it varies widely. So you have scientists, you have doctors, you even often have DVMs, doctors of veterinary medicine creating animal models. For many normal projects, I’m a pretty good electrical engineer and I can program, so I can run a program that has electrical software and mechanical and that’s OK–I can understand enough of it to know what is going on. But when you are running a project with eight or 10 or more specific scientific applications, unless you have time to go to school for the rest of your life and get 12 PhDs, there is no way you are going to understand it all.

Read the full article, Common Cause, at Projects@Work (requires a free subscription, but they don’t bury you in email if you do subscribe).