Before I forget, I have a Scientific Computing column available discussing the folly of “Meet-and-Greet” conferences, and why they’re a bad deal. (You may also learn something of the dangerous sport of snowboarding).

Several years back, during my Digital Equipment Corporation days, I was working at a large chicken processor who wanted to put in a LIMS to help track their product quality control. The project was enrobed in a cloud of doom from the start.
The terrible saga began when the salesman who sold the project was so severely abused by the customer’s Purchasing Agent that he agreed to sell them a LIMS on a too-small computer. He’d asked me a few weeks earlier about the bargain-basement configuration, and I told him it simply wouldn’t run on the system he was proposing. Not to be deterred by a mere engineer, he kept calling our corporate office until he got someone in marketing to say, “Well, theoretically it could work. Maybe.”
Of course, he ran with that bit of advice and sold the project.
(Sign of Doom number 1)

Next up, I toured the new lab the customer had built. Only one small flaw: the architect didn’t plan any room for computers, so there was not a square foot available to place the super minicomputer in the building…unless…unless they took over the small employee’s coat closet, placed the computer and some routers in there, cooled it with a cheap table fan, and hung a $3 thermometer in the room to monitor the temperature. (Which they did).
(Sign of Doom number 2)

When the project went south a few months later because the machine was too small, and now, also too hot, my manager asked me how “theoretically” we could fix this problem. It wasn’t because DEC cared about the LIMS project, but the customer was planning on pulling the plug on a $10,000,000 transaction processing project if DEC didn’t fix the problem with LIMS in under two months. I said, “Well, theoretically, we would need to find some of the product engineers who’d been reassigned within DEC, but pulling them from their current jobs would require an executive V.P. to sign off.” This was most likely impossible, so I also added that, “The only way we could get this done in two months is to give me the corporate jet so I could pick up project team members each week in Boston, Tennessee, and a few other ports of call.”
Satisfied that the bureaucracy of DEC would immediately kill the project, I sat back and grinned sardonically. Within 30 minutes, I got a call. “Randy, when can you start?”
“WHOA!” I said, “I said ‘Theoretically’ it could work. I didn’t say I wanted to do this.”
Well, that was before the orders came down from Mount Olympus in DEC, and the CEO said he wanted to get this done. Before I knew it, I was aboard the corporate jet picking up resources who had been freed from their current jobs. With the crisis management project team in place, we plotted the resurrection of the project whilst 30,000 feet in the air.
What could possibly go wrong?
Don’t ever ask that question.
The beloved lab director, whose new lab and new computer were his babies, was apparently not in good enough shape to mow his lawn, and fell over dead as a mackerel doing just that.
(Sign of Doom number 3)

When the crisis management team arrived to fix the project, and recall the lab had no room for coats or consultants, the only place to work, was…you guessed it, the deceased lab manager’s office.
After his death, the office had been literally roped off as some sort of shrine to the departed scientist, and when it appeared we’d have to work in the office, reluctant, tearful employees parted the velvet ropes for us, whereby we came in and plopped huge computers, printers, and monitors on the tables, brushing aside the papers and mementos left on the desk, and hunkered down. Whenever a printer failed to print, or a computer mysteriously rebooted, we all joined in a chant to ward off the poltergeist fouling our project.
(Sign of Doom Number 4)

As we hit the month of December, projects slow down for seemingly paranormal reasons. Even subtracting out vacation and holiday time, Gantt Charts fall into the red zone without justification. Eggnog over-imbibing? Project team members incarcerated for shoplifting when accounting errors left their checkbooks bereft of funds? Who knows?
The surest antidote to the December Project Doom Blues is to follow a few simple guidelines:
• Define final-month goals that can be reasonably accomplished in the remaining few project days left in the month. Remember, small goals are a good thing. Missed large goals are a bad thing.
• Look for those “budget gotcha’s” whereby funds are targeted as “use me or lose me”. Ask suppliers/contractors to bill in advance.
• Deep six tasks with complex interdependencies as the chances for rallying internal and external resources for the greater good of the project are an altruistic, yet psychotic delusion.
• Queue up all critical path items to be addressed the moment the New Year’s hangovers subside.
• Be prepared to explain to upper management that the sheer power of their will is not enough to get the project done this year, and if they don’t like it, they can lump it (okay, this sorta applies to those lucky Lotto winners in the audience today).
Good luck in keeping your project together over the holidays. Just remember, things can always get worse.

Cheers!