Anti-patterns in project management

Friday, May 27, 2011 Posted by Siva
  • Death march: Everyone knows that the project is going to be a disaster – except the CEO -- so the truth is hidden to prevent immediate cancellation of the project - (although the CEO often knows and does it anyway to maximise profit). However, the truth remains hidden and the project is artificially kept alive until the Day Zero finally comes ("Big Bang"). Alternative definition: Employees are pressured to work late nights and weekends on a project with an unreasonable deadline.
  • Groupthink: During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking
  • Smoke and mirrors: Demonstrating how unimplemented -and difficult to implement- functions will appear
  • Software bloat: Allowing successive versions of a system to demand ever more resources
  • Waterfall model: An older method of software development that inadequately deals with unanticipated change
Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern