
Main ingredients for turning around a doomed IT project - AdamPadam
https://medium.com/@adam.haeger/the-3-main-ingredients-for-turning-around-a-doomed-it-project-13728224f1ee
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HelloNurse
Normally, a "doomed" IT project is canceled (maybe partly, in the form of a
cheaper redesign/scope reduction) or allowed to be late; how can it be "turned
around" when the damage is done? A team doesn't become more capable or more
efficient by trying hard and recovering motivation, learning takes time.

Discussing "mission", ownership and (most worrying) values in this context is
very strange; it's probably advice for nontechnical (i.e. incompetent)
managers that don't have, and never had, any chance to understand and address
the actual problems.

~~~
BlackLotus89
What he seems to be talking about are failing projects. Even thought he talks
about doomed projects on both medium posts (that he posted both in a matter of
minutes to HN) he is referencing to failing projects that have something
against them (money, disfunctional team, time, ...)

Many of his conclusions are questionable and seem more or less only plausible
because everyone likes a dramatic story/underdog winning. E.g. in his "I'm
passionate about doomed IT projects" article he says

> Extremely unified and high performing teams. > These are people that I would
> truly cherish the opportunity to work with again. I know that they are rock
> solid and that if we ever worked together again, we would make an extremely
> effective team right off the bat.

Those are the same people that fucked the project up to begin with and yay
they changed and the project was saved and maybe they redeemed themself in the
process, but I would rather work with people that I could trust from the
beginning and not becajse they changed when their ass was on the line. I have
quite a few people I like to work with and some I met in a project that felt
like "we against the world" but with them it never felt like we were failing
and nobody would call the project dommed, because we routinely achieve the
results we more or less expected. If we would fuck up this hard that our
project was deemed as doomed than I would have a hard time getting sleep at
night.

Anyway his article is "only" about changing the mindset and talking to the
team, but really nothing about how to organize. And yes of course a project is
doomed if nobody on the team wants to work on it, bad-mouths it and actively
tries to fuck you over.

Ps excuse my language, but the "article" left a bad taste in my mouth because
it seems more "inspirational" then anything else from a person that just wants
exposure. I could be wrong... I don't think I'm

~~~
HelloNurse
"I had to learn, out of sheer necessity, the tools to create unity and
direction for teams. This is a skill that is so powerful and fascinating it
eclipses all my technical skills."

"No matter what has happened in the past, now is the time to own up to
mistakes, and set new standards for going forward."

The familiar delusional narrative that it's _their_ fault is easy to see.

In addition, passion about turning around failing projects seems intrinsically
psychotic; it's a job, not a struggle for one's life.

~~~
AdamPadam
Hey HelloNurse, thanks for the feedback. I understand that you think Im
sensationalising, that advice is taken to heart and will not be repeated in my
future writing.

Ill elaborate on your points.

"I had to learn, out of sheer necessity, the tools to create unity and
direction for teams. This is a skill that is so powerful and fascinating it
eclipses all my technical skills."

I say this because I'm a programmer, not a team building dude.

But I was put in a project to turn it around, an important detail I did not
put in the article. The project was over time and over time and over budget
and most of the original team was removed and me and the team I refer to was
put in.

There was a total breakdown of communication and no work productive work was
getting done.

Nobody knew what to do. Thats why I contacted a guy I know which does business
coaching and he taught me the three overarching things I mention in article 2
and the tools to build teams that I will be elaborating on in future posts.

"No matter what has happened in the past, now is the time to own up to
mistakes, and set new standards for going forward."

I have seen plenty of unethical behaviour in my career. When your ass is on
the line and your loosing money every hour, its easy to take the easy way out
and take shortcuts. This is something that will permeate the project culture,
and needs to stop. My sleep is more important than the project. Does this make
it clearer what I meant?

"In addition, passion about turning around failing projects seems
intrinsically psychotic; it's a job, not a struggle for one's life."

Here Im absolutely of guilty sensationalising. I was trying to get people to
click and it worked, at the time of writing this comment it has almost 1k
reads on medium which is way more than I was expecting.

But it's a lie, Im not passionate about doomed projects, I'm passionate about
highly successful projects. I just happened to learn the tools for how to
create goal oriented teams from doomed projects.

Thanks again for taking the time to write a comment, I'm very new at this so I
need the candid feedback (everyone I showed to beforehand just said it was
awesome so they were clearly just humouring me :D ).

Cheers, Adam

~~~
onlydeadheroes
> I was trying to get people to click and it worked (...) But it's a lie

Can't wait for your post about how you grew out of being a liar and how being
truthful is a skill "so powerful and fascinating it eclipses all my" blabla

~~~
AdamPadam
OK, let me balance that.

It's not a lie because Im very grateful that I went through this because it
taught me something valuable. But Im obviously not passionate about failed
projects because the goal is good projects.

Now, if you are just going to try to catch me out and not try to understand
that I am trying to communicate something real I am not going to waste my time
replying.

I respect your feedback, please try to respect that Im trying to learn.

~~~
onlydeadheroes
No. Don't hide behind words like "respect" and "learn". In your own words, you
were not "trying to learn". What you were trying to do was:

"I was trying to get people to click and it worked, at the time of writing
this comment it has almost 1k reads on medium which is way more than I was
expecting."

