Please note that delivered functionality or business value is not part of the ‘project cost’ equasion…

I have often wondered about, and looked in amazement at these large projects that seem to go on forever. I believe that most projects can be done with less people in less time, and many projects are not worth doing at all.

Maybe someone at <insert large ‘consultancy’ company here> did actually invent a working perpetuum mobile…

Read what a (former) big shot in a large company writes on how this mechanism works in practice, and what it feels like to be on the receiving end. How to destroy your company by packages, outsourcing and ‘consulting’ companies (and not paying attention to your users and customers)….

“Outsourcing is a brilliant trick of the managers. The responsibility for the failing project is moved to an outside vendor. They are now the object of aggression.

The real customers don’t talk with the programmers. They talk with the managers that are talking to managers that are talking to managers. Somewhere in the chain of communication all the meaning is lost. The result is something they don’t want, the users don’t want and the customers don’t want. Last but not least the process took so long that the market has changed. They have to start all over again.

Do you now understand why we there is such a shortage in IT specialists? About 30% of IT-projects is succesful. This means that 70% of the IT-specialists are working for nothing.

My advice

Adapt what is working as long as possible.

A team of 15 people is capable of doing more than a team of 1000.

Do it yourself.“

Hans describes a full circle process of what happens before a project is outsourced. I call it the “Shit” cycle I couldn’t resist making a drawing of it:

I missed one phase in the process: the pre-project phase, which consists of a sales rep of <insert large ‘consultancy’ company here> taking the high-level manager to the golf course…

What I don’t know is, each time the project goes through the cycle again whether golfing is required (Hans writes about one project that cycled for ten years…).

Jason Kolb highlights some of the reasons (“Is Google dying?”) . I usually think as well that the largest Corporate Mammoths will be attacked first (e.g. by virus writers and spammers). I hadn’t applied this dynamic to google yet, as Jason does. Maybe this particular Mammoth has become too greedy…

On a related note, Nynke hopes to save Woolly Multinational Mammoths from extinctinction.

I say Adapt or Dye – long live the purple haired mammoths…