Notes from the trenches.

Bad Project Top Trumps

Posted: April 2nd, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: rant | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments »

I’ve been hearing about a lot of bad and late projects lately. So I’ve come up with a game you can play with your friends to remind you how not to do things!

Bad project top trumps. [Disclaimer: This is just a bit of fun, figures are completely arbitrary and bear no relation to real projects].

Instructions:

  1. Print off this post 2 sets of these cards
  2. Find a friend
  3. Shuffle the cards
  4. Deal the cards such that each player has the same number
  5. Each player takes a card from the top of their deck
  6. Each player reads out his or her Likelyhood of failure
  7. The winner is the one with the highest of lowest (depending on the player’s disposition)
  8. The winner takes the loser’s card and chooses the next statistic to compare on the next draw
  9. The game is over when one player has taken all of the other’s cards

Cards:

Found Time

  • Task Lists: 0
  • Developers: 5
  • Deadline Proximity: 10
  • Remaining Work: 100
  • Architects: 1
  • Scope Creep: 0
  • Time spent on design: 20
  • Managers: 5
  • Likelyhood of failure: 85%

Death March

  • Task Lists: 1
  • Developers: 5
  • Deadline Proximity: 70
  • Remaining Work: 300
  • Time spent on design: 150
  • Scope Creep: 20
  • Architects: 2
  • Managers: 2
  • Likelyhood of failure: 90%

The Overengineer

  • Task Lists: 2
  • Developers: 10
  • Deadline Proximity: 100
  • Remaining Work: 100
  • Time spent on design: 200
  • Scope Creep: 50
  • Architects: 5
  • Managers: 0
  • Likelyhood of failure: 50%

Surgeon’s Theatre

  • Task Lists: 1
  • Developers: 10
  • Deadline Proximity: 100
  • Remaining Work: 500
  • Time spent on design: 500
  • Scope Creep: 75
  • Architects: 1
  • Managers: 8
  • Likelyhood of failure: 90%

Holy Grail

  • Task Lists: 1
  • Developers: 5
  • Deadline Proximity: 100
  • Remaining Work: 50
  • Time spent on design: 50
  • Scope Creep: 0
  • Architects: 1
  • Managers: 1
  • Likelyhood of failure: 10%

2 Comments on “Bad Project Top Trumps”

  1. 1 Dave Mills said at 3:43 pm on April 2nd, 2009:

    you realise that despite being a good idea this is in complete violation of the goals of your last post lol

    dave

  2. 2 Rob Stevenson-Leggett said at 2:24 pm on April 3rd, 2009:

    Do as I say, not as I do

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