The Unfulfilled Project: An Interview with Jerry Weinberg

CIO — Gerald M. Weinberg (known as Jerry) has been a leader in the system development field for more than half a century. Winner of the Warnier Prize and the Stevens Award for his writing on software quality, he is also a charter member of the Computing Hall of Fame in San Diego.

Weinberg has written several books on leadership, including Becoming a Technical Leader, The Secrets of Consulting, More Secrets of Consulting and the four-volume Quality Software Management series. His books on human behavior are classics, including Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method, The Psychology of Computer Programming and An Introduction to General Systems Thinking. He incorporates his knowledge of science, engineering and human behavior into all of his software consulting work as well as his writing.

He also writes what he calls "nerd novels," such as The Aremac Project, about what it takes for brilliant people to produce quality work.

CIO.com sat down with him (virtually, in e-mail) to ask Weinberg about his presentation at the next Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, called "Moving Projects Forward"—and his thoughts on what makes IT projects succeed or fail.

CIO.com: Let's start out with an anecdote: a project gone wrong, terribly terribly wrong.

Projects go wrong for many reasons, but most of the failures can be traced to missed communications. Someone has a problem and someone else could solve the problem, but they never get together. The larger and more hierarchical the project, the more likely this kind of bobbled connection.

Here's an example. ZetaBang Systems (a fictitious name) had 1,200 employees and one product, an integrated hardware/software system sold to large manufacturing companies. The development of the newest model was seriously behind schedule, which resulted in a new CEO being brought in to accelerate the project. The CEO's consultants discovered that software development was so slow because their data storage bank was 99% full. Access speeds were glacial. Workers were unable to put new data into storage unless they found something else the could be archived and replaced. Managers spent most of their time fighting to steal some other manager's storage.

The solution was simple, and the new CEO immediately ordered a vast new storage array on an accelerated basis. But a month after the array arrived, progress was still sluggish. The CEO convened a problem-solving clinic, inviting representatives from every part of the company he thought had a stake in the problem. The clinic quickly discovered that things were still slow because the new storage array still hadn't been brought on line.

The CEO took two of his best problem-solvers to the computing center where they discovered that the array was not on line because they lacked one cable. The trio marched down to the tiny shop that custom-made cables for the entire company. They confronted Cable Guy, who explained that the cables were made on a strictly first-come-first-served basis, and they would have to wait their turn—another month, at least.

The CEO then said, "I authorize you to put this one cable at the head of the line."

Cable guy replied, "And who are you?"

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