Friday, May 09, 2008

The end.

Six months ago I blogged about the challenges of my new job. Here is some of what I wrote.
Slowly I learned more of the story. Other project managers told me I was taking over a doomed project and that the project is behind schedule with less than 6 months until implementation. The project had also failed in two previous attempts at implementation. The other PM's were steering clear of this job.

Then I learned that the CEO of this Fortune 500 corporation had a hand in the firing of the previous project manager, unbelievably high level attention for a project this size.

Finally, I get this email note from the owner of my new company (portions redacted).
Welcome aboard. We, and specifically this project, need you. If this
project fails rest assured we will be blamed regardless of our degree
of culpability...

So don your armor and proceed into battle (and watch your backside).

PS - Please don't run out the gate with your arms flailing.
I actually laughed out loud when I read that.
My Project from Hell is complete and turned over. Even in spite of having additional scope (with no new resources) added 3 months before the outage, valve flow test results that caused a major system redesign after the start of the outage, and an engineer that was trying to see the project fail even before I arrived.

The project was finished behind schedule, but was never on critical path for the outage. Nuclear power is now safer yet for America.

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