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

The whole development team didn’t understand the reasons behind the technical practices. They ended up cutting corners here or gaming the system there, creating little sub-teams—or even “teams of one”—operating with a different set of standards and an incomplete view of the whole system. This made integrating code a nightmare-like experience that n

Any employee who is smart will not try to argue with the numbers, because you can’t argue with assumptions which have not been made explicit. But from the moment they hear the objectives, they begin assembling plausible excuses for why they will not achieve them. Finally, since everyone has deliberately kept their personal thoughts, feelings, and a

we failed to make the dependency explicit.

Employees do not all have clear goals and objectives, tied to direct business impact. • Late projects and tasks are the norm, not a rare occurrence. • Employees tend to wait passively if their progress has been halted by another employee’s failure to meet an expected timeline. • Responsibilities within work teams are unclear or contradictory. • Fai