Projects go wrong.  Despite some people’s best efforts, hopes to the contrary, or helpless denials, that’s a fact.  ‘Best effort’ is sometimes not good enough to help a failing project recover, ‘hope’ can merely be unfounded optimism and denial in the light of facts is just part of the grief cycle.

Nobody really wants to fail, very few like it, and even fewer will enjoy it.  Those that planned a project did not purposely plan to fail.  Perhaps there may have been a bit of a gamble with a tendency towards optimism rather than applying the caution of pessimism.  Projects are about risk as well as opportunity and as the idiom goes, “Nothing ventured…nothing gained” but not every cloud has a silver lining. Continue reading →