Dead Fish: Excerpt from Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies

Visit our Excerpts section to read Dead Fish, a sample "pattern of project behavior" from Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies, the brand-new book by Peopleware authors Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister plus a dream team of coauthors: Peter Hruschka, Steve McMenamin, James Robertson, and Suzanne Robertson. Copyright © 2008. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Dead Fish: From Day One, the project has no chance of meeting its goals; most people on the project know this and say nothing.

The goals of many IT projects can be summarized simply: We need this set of functionality, with this accuracy, with reasonable robustness, by this calendar date. The team is assembled, and the statements of goals and constraints are worked into detailed requirements and designs; and they're published.

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.

As the Greek tragedy plays out, the project will slog on. Then, typically a few weeks before expected delivery, each project member, project manager, manager of a project manager, and anybody standing remotely near the project, will either

1. declare shock, dismay, and amazement that the project is nowhere near where it needs to be for the upcoming release
   
   or,
   
   
2. lay low and say absolutely nothing about anything unless asked

Why do so many people in so many organizations spray reality deodorant rather than simply state, "No way this project is happening the way we want. The dead fish is here."

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