I have seen, and worked on, many absolute disasters. Fortunately, I have not launched many. I may have just been lucky.
Here is a test I did in some of my classes based on what I have learned by studying the really big failures.
The Test:
Please think of an absolutely disastrous project you have experience with, or good knowledge of. Fix it in your mind. They worst f*****p you can think of. One that took way longer than it should have, cost way more than it should have, and when it was done, was something that no one was proud of. One that you were personally involved with, or have studied extensively. It would be better if it were an engineering project, but it does not have to be.
Got one in mind? Keep it to yourself. No need to tell anyone what it is. Just answer some questions about it:
Was the project a failure because it was underfunded?
Was the project a failure because it did not get enough people, equipment and other access to resources?
Was the project a failure because it did not get enough attention from the highest levels of management and publicity?
And, most importantly -
Would the project have gone much better, maybe even been successful, if the originators had discovered a few basic misconceptions early on, and had taken appropriate action?
Got your answers?
Look below.
In the classes I have given to project leaders, 95% of the participants answer as below:
Was the project a failure because it was underfunded?
No, plenty of money available. And spending twice as much money probably still wouldn't have made the effort successful.
Was the project a failure because it did not get enough people, equipment and other access to resources?
No, lots of stuff and people. Maybe not the right people, but no shortages.
Was the project a failure because it did not get enough attention from the highest levels of management and publicity?
No, most were very high profile, especially as it wore on.
And most important:
Would the project have gone much better, maybe even been successful, if the originators had discovered and acted on a few basic misconceptions early on?
Yes, what they missed was....
I hope you answered this way too, or the rest of this won't make much sense.
One person said he chose the Viet Nam War as his disaster, cause it was certainly the biggest crash and burn he had ever seen. Another person said the Nuclear Powered Airplane. The IBM FAA project came up also.
Given this result, why is it on the first day that Project Managers always ask for more money, more people, more stuff, and try to get more attention from management? Obviously this does not guarantee success, in fact, too much may take you under. Rarely do Project Managers want to take some more time up front, get some more experts in the room, and figure out if there is a better way to get done what they need to. "We can't do that!!! We're Already Behind Schedule! We have to start buying stuff now!!!"
I have learned to prefer is this:
if you have to, cut my staff, cut my budget, let someone else have the attention of corporate. Instead, give me some open minded, creative people, who are experienced in the use or execution of the product, to brainstorm up front solutions to the tough problems we will almost certainly encounter.
Programs that do this are far more successful than those who hit the ground on day one with a full army. By brainstorming up front, I have lead projects where we cut development time and costs by big numbers and provided a superior product, turning hard projects into easy ones. Oh, those projects encountered problems, for sure. But we were still under the original budget and schedule, and delivered knockout products.
Invest the time early on to figure the hard stuff out. Eventually, you will be overwhelmed by daily maintenance of the "marching army", which will make you spend all of your time on logistics, and little time on thinking. Having a more complete understanding of what will be hard and easy will allow you to make better decisions throughout the job.
I ran a job once, and the lead electrical engineer told me the only way we could meet the spec was to use the absolute fastest processor "available". And it wouldn't be released for at least a month. You know that typically means it will be even later.
Starting out with the fastest available anything is risky, because there is nowhere to go if problems come up. Time to park some brains on the problem.
We dug in, and found out the overall approach would not have worked with a processor twice as fast as the one he had selected. It was too inefficient. We would have certainly failed. We went back to the drawing board, did some Brain Salad Surgery to develop a new approach, and the project ended up successful. An extra week in the beginning probably lopped a year off the end, if the project had been successful at all.
Note that we only took a week. The law of diminishing returns applies here. If smart people park their brains on something, and challenge each other, a week is a lot of time. Longer than this, you may need to change pitchers. Or it could be out of reach. But you won't know without trying.
By the way, sometimes, you may encounter a sacred cow that you have to gore ("What? We're not using ******** ? Are you crazy?" ).
Unfortunately, the road to success is littered with the carcasses of these animals. Eventually, they all meet their demise, some naturally, some violently, some just wander off and hang around on the sidelines (ADA?). If one of the conditions of the project is to use a sacred cow, then it becomes another problem to solve. Note that this problem is handled completely differently under the Meritocratic System than under the Colonial system.
The building of the Panama Canal is a great example of the principles described here. After several disastrous, failed attempts to start construction immediately (gotta move a lot of dirt, quick, we are behind schedule!!! Why does everyone keep dying?), John Frank Stevens took over a year to study the problem and develop a design for the infrastructure to allow the canal to be built. When he had worked out how to control disease, get rid of the dirt and handle the weather conditions, it became a straight ahead civil construction job.
At that point he stepped aside, and let a large group of engineers follow his plan. It was finished two years ahead of schedule. Every project leader should study that success to understand how a project can be successful by figuring out what the hard parts are first, and what your solutions are, rather than getting trapped into the daily struggle to move dirt on the first day.