The Commandeered Project
At a large company, the database administration (DBA) team decided it needed to formalize
its backup and recovery operations. The goal was to clearly document its procedures
and establish a periodic disaster recovery drill. All of this was confined to the
context of the database environment. This was a large undertaking for the team, but it
had a clear goal and realistic deliverables.
Every item of work had to be associated with a project, so the team leader entitled
the project ???Database Disaster Recovery.??? Eventually, through the miracle of status
reports, this project title reached an executive who was so impressed with the initiative
and dedication of the DBA team that he rewarded them with the usual: more work. The
company announced that the DBA team leader would become the project manager for
a new company-wide disaster recovery project.
As you might imagine, the result was the Never-Ending Project. The DBA team
leader was not a project manager by profession. Nearly every technical department in
the company had a representative present at meetings, which were consumed by continual
discussion of every possible scenario that the project needed to address.
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