The Story of a Project Destined To Fail

This is the story of two companies in need of success. They are at a similar place, similar lifecycle stage, same struggles, same losses, which somehow made them connect. Life in companies can be tough; long working hours, subpar salaries, overloaded teams. But bold, majestic visions, dreams, and a constant thirst to eat the world. So there they are: two organizations in need saying, why don’t we get together, in a meet cute like in those movies when he and she stumble upon each other, she drops her papers, and as he helps her pick them up, they find each other’s eyes while an in-crescendo Michael Boltonesque music fills the atmosphere.
So, off they go the two lovebirds, penning a press release and announcing to whoever wants to hear: here we are, we are stronger together, and be careful because we are coming to get ya.

There have been millions of failed projects since projects were invented. And the life of failed projects is documented in a very special way. Projects are announced with fanfare when they are born, but die in deafening silence when they go. Understandably, no one wants to announce that they have flopped, that it all turned out to be a dud. So we don’t get to know too much about failed projects, even less about failed *joint* projects. But their dynamics is reasonably simple. For a start, failed projects tend to be born failed; it’s just that no one wants to acknowledge it until it’s too obvious, and too late.

The two companies of this story kick off this joint adventure to create a shared frankenstein. Which is an inaccurate use of an analogy from the outset. In reality, Frankenstein was the name of the scientist—Victor Frankenstein—who gave life to this sentient creature he created. So, let’s call the artifact the two companies are planning to build together the right way: The Creature.

In the beginning, The Creature is conceived to be the long-awaited evolution to whatever exists. This is very important for failed projects: unparalleled grandiosity. If it’s not big, complex and bold, the chances of failure decrease, which is not what we are trying to dissect here today. Today we are talking about failing successfully.
In the original story, Dr. Frankenstein worked mostly alone. Yes, he eventually hires Igor¹, but Igor does not call any shots. Igor was a project manager. So, Dr. Frankenstein followed his own heart and managed to cobble what he wanted.
In the failed project of our story today, there is no single Dr. Frankenstein but the combination of several Doctors Frankenstein accompanied with their own Igors, all of them furnished with their own mindsets, idiosyncrasies, vices and egos.
Now, a fundamental phase of any decent two-company adventure begins with the mutual distrust phase. Turns out, these two companies are not sharing everything they know with each other. There is an unsettling level of secrecy which starts to reveal itself as both parties spend more time together. What are they hiding from each other? If they are not competitors, what secrets are there to keep? Didn’t the contract say “knowledge transfer” somewhere? What did they sign? Who signed? Failed projects need a good dose of pointless secrecy to qualify as sound candidates for failure. Think of the projects you currently are working for that involve your company and someone else: Do you see any hide-and-seek of information happening? You are probably on board a future failed project. Fasten your seatbelt. A potential failed project of a reasonably good pedigree needs to foster an atmosphere of polite, mutual suspicion. Otherwise the unholy can happen: it may come to fruition. God forbid. 

Failed projects require that the org charts move a lot. From either side, it is necessary that names and positions change, for no reason. Failed projects must ensure no one will grow fond of any colleague from the other side. Move them around, send them for a trip to find their inner self somewhere, but they must move. Affinity is detrimental for failure. It’s happened to you before: you start to feel technical affinity with a colleague from the other side only to find next Monday this person has been abducted and sent to a mysterious coastal village, where his captors have designated her as Number Six. The two companies of the story are following the pattern very well. Few months into the collaboration, several managers from different domains have already gone missing. Things are looking promising.

Now, somewhere in the history of these corporate meet cutes, one of the two companies takes the first step and makes a bold move: it proposes to visit the other company. A distance relationship may work out, but at some point there is a need for some “skin”, so tickets are booked, triggering butterflies in the stomach on both sides. Times are exciting.

Visits are awkward though. They kill the magic in a way, because things don’t look like in the pictures or video calls. During these visits is when the visiting party realizes the precariousness of the other one (which is unsettlingly similar to their own precariousness) in terms of facilities, processes and coffee quality.
So, the visit has now made a dent in the relationship. The visiting company observes that the leaders of the other company irradiate a weird energy that tells them they shouldn’t even buy a used car from them, let alone co-develop a complex system. But a respectable failed project in the making carries on, despite the multiple warning signs. Conservation of momentum².

As time goes by, The Creature slowly starts to come of age. As expected, it is a monster of two heads. Its architecture shows two separate, distinctive big limbs, each belonging to each side because, as much as projects try to fight Conway’s law, it always wins, despite being coined half a century ago. The Creature’s mutant anatomy has developed according to how things have been done since day one. Facing the inadequacies of cobbling together two very different animals, the two companies resort into a set of poorly-tested, last minute hacks to stitch the monster together as the roll out day comes close.

It’s alive! The question is for how long.

The abomination takes a few steps, and everybody gasps, and prematurely celebrates. There is some clapping here, some prosecco sipping there. But the monster has feet of clay, and after some sloppy zigzagging, it falls on its nose, to never wake up again.

The final phase of a failed project is marked by a reigning fake sense of surprise. How did this happen? Where did it go wrong? Reports will be written and ignored. It was fun while it lasted, but there is only one way forward: divorce. It’s not you, it’s me.

1. He was technically called Fritz

2. Also known as binding contracts