Sauce Of Failure

I ran across this quote last night in A Clash Of Kings by George R. R. Martin. An army has suffered a great defeat, and some of those on the losing side are claiming that they were overwhelmed by evil magic wielded by the enemy general.

"Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence."

This is a pretty harsh statement, but it seemed to remind me of the excuses I have often heard from the managers of failed projects. I don't think incompetence is the right word in this context -- more frequently managers are hiding (or simply not recognizing) the shortcomings of their approach, their management skills, or their communication mechanisms.

What are the most frequent sauces you have seen served over project failures?

• Changing requirements?
• Lack of funding?
• Low programmer productivity

Just as nobody dies of poverty, you can't fail through lack of funding. Not having what causes failure?

I have heard several project managers bemoan the fact that the users simply weren't willing to pay for the infrastructure required by the project, so after X months the project was canned. Is this really what happened, or is there some more fundamental failure that let the situation arise? -- bb

• Bugs in underlying platforms?

-- BillBarnett

• Attempting too many things at once?
• Too much time FireFighting, not enough time on the important projects?

Bill, Very Slick and well worded , thank you.. --CarlParziale

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Of course, the favorite sauce of developers is "It was management's fault."

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