Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior (Dorset House eBooks)

Adrenaline junkie organizations react rather than consider. The result is that most things are in a state of flux, and nothing is settled or long-term. The fluid state persists: Specifications are fluid—nobody really knows what to build. Designs and plans are fluid—they will almost certainly be changed tomorrow. There is no attempt to prioritize by

Adrenaline junkie organizations don’t always fail. Some of them continue to operate at a frenzied pace for years. But none of them can ever build anything big—that requires stability and planning. Junkie behavior is not scalable—it is limited to what can be achieved by a relatively few people working very, very hard with little direction or strateg

7. Mañana Photo by Mark Lisao (markldxb@gmail.com) We all have windows of time within which we recognize that we need to start moving and keep moving to complete some work. Delivery dates beyond those windows create no sense of urgency, and therefore little motivation to act.

A common way that commitment misunderstandings happen is this: One party expresses need, and the other nods in understanding. The first party takes this as a commitment: “I told him I had to have it by December thirty-first, that it was absolutely essential.” The

Staffing a project with people who care passionately about what they’re doing is a recipe for success. Their passion may boil over from time to time, but mopping it up is just part of the price you need to pay to achieve ambitious goals.

9. Management By Mood Ring1

What’s so bad about managers being optimistic and displaying a little emotion? Nothing, of course. But when you find a project manager whose communication is skewed very strongly to this end of the spectrum, you will typically discover two problems. First, this style of reporting does not really fulfill the most fundamental purpose of all project s

Watch out for a particularly virulent form of mañana: inordinate amounts of time spent getting ready to get started. Everyone spends time hunting for the perfect tools to support testing; everyone debates exactly how the libraries will be set up to provide the best possible support for the developers. This time has much more value if it is saved fo

“There has never been a project that, as it came down to the finish, wouldn’t die for an extra week on the schedule.”