Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior (Dorset House eBooks)

They have great confidence in their individual and collective abilities.

Most adrenaline junkie organizations contain at least one bottleneck. This is the hero who makes all the design decisions, is the only source of requirements, or makes all the architectural decisions. He is playing two roles: One is to make himself appear to be busier than mere mortals can hope to be. The second is to produce a logjam of decision-m

And yet, the requestors were always pressing for a firm estimate of cost and a completion date.

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 next time you hear someone in your organization refer to a failure to communicate, look underneath for the subtitle. It’s likely to read, “I understand you clearly, but I hate what you’re saying.” Calling this a communication failure turns everyone’s attention away from the real cause—legitimate conflict—and focuses attention instead on a false

“We need to distinguish between cost reduction and organizational bulimia.”

The key difference is how the essence is captured. Patterns are absorbed and refined over time, stored away in the deep, nonverbal recesses of your mind, and conveyed to you in the form of hunches. The hunch that a particular ballcarrier is about to dart left, or that your spouse is ready to explode in anger, is the result of recognized patterns fr

They have an instinctive sense of time urgency.

8. Eye Contact The organization tends to co-locate project personnel when the work is both urgent and complex.