Since the inventor of Ethernet, Bob Metcalfe, is a friend, I thought I might look into the details of the Ethernet protocol to see how it was designed. I opened the spec to be informed, not charmed, but to my surprise, I found that the protocol was a thing of substantial beauty. It was spare where it needed to be spare, elegant in concept, and its

When you get the sense that what is being solicited is not your input but only your approval, you know exactly what’s happening: Welcome to another happy clappy meeting.

6. Referred Pain The project solves the apparent problem but fails to address its underlying cause.

The manager reports status based on the activities, efforts, and enthusiasms of the team rather than on the risks, decisions, and issues facing the project.

Where all justification for co-location is ignored (cannot be tolerated), the distributed team myth has been swallowed whole by man agement. Anybody, anywhere, who happens to be coming available when a project begins, is the natural candidate to join the new project team. In such an environment, teams are teams in name only.

Goal detachment is destructive because people pursuing detached goals are only coincidentally working toward the success of the project; their efforts are just as likely to be inconsequential or even counterproductive.

The quest for perfect information.

Mañana is our state of recognizing personal responsibility to complete some work—without recognizing that we must commence work now in order to be successful.

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.