Why do projects suck? Projects should be fun, exciting and rewarding. They should deliver excitement and value into the rest of the business and make the people behind them proud. So why doesn't this happen?

This GeekNight is organised along OpenSpaces principles and will look at the reasons for projects failing and also failing to be enjoyable for those taking part. The idea will be to get people to talk about their experiences of sucky projects and record those discussions here on the week. We would also like to come up with strategies to stop projects sucking and present them to the group and again record them on the wiki.

Outcome

The event has now be completed. We now know why projects suck and we can now set about making our projects rock!

The evening has been written up on it's own wiki. You are welcome to review and contribute.

OpenSpace Principles

It's self-organising, if you think of a reason projects suck then write down the topic so others can see it. Then when ready, talk about it.

As soon as there are two people who have a topic you should just talk about it. Other people will dive in if they are interested.

When there is nothing left to say on a topic. Stop talking about it and join another conversation.

If you are not finding a conversation interesting, join another one, start one or talk a chance to think about what you've heard.

If you hear something interesting then write it down, after the event we can write up everyone's thoughts in a wiki and record the event for everyone to refer back to.

Initial Topics

• Infrastructure upgrades are left till the last minute
• No-one is involved for the lifetime of the project and each group tips problems over the wall to the next stage of the project.