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Society is once again left holding the bag
How do projects fail at large tech companies? As I’ve said many times, failure means executives aren’t happy with how the project turned out. At healthy companies, that typically means that a sensible engineer wouldn’t be happy either, because the project didn’t work or users hated it. But what actually causes the projects to fail? I’ve seen a lot of projects go wrong - both up close and at a distance - in the last ten years. Here are the main reasons why. Doomed from the start Lots of projects fail because there’s no way they could possibly have succeeded. In American law, some cases get dismissed at “summary judgment”: even if the plaintiff succeeds in proving everything they aim to prove, it still wouldn’t add up to demonstrating enough illegal activity to win their case. At tech companies, some projects are like that: even if the plan goes off without a hitch, the project is still doomed to fail. Some doomed projects begin with over-ambitious plans. For instance, an executive…
