Diary of a project in distress

The plan is to note all the little steps and stumbles that a new project takes on its way to failure.

Day 1: I’ve just had a meeting to talk through the pitch designs, proposed functionality, and sitemap for a new project, which has to be delivered by the end of July. The sitemap is out of date, including sections that apparently won’t exist in the finished project; functionality is uncertain, and designs are incomplete. We have another meeting later this afternoon to meet the Group Account Director, to bombard him with questions.

Day 1(a): We heard that the project, which had been costed at £94K, had actually been sold at £54K, and that we offered hosting at a monthly cost of £250, which by our estimates will require load balanced SQL Servers (which we recently costed at £2 – 3K pm).

No, there’s nothing that can be descoped or delivered later; it’s all Flash; and the designs haven’t been completed yet alone signed off.

Oh, but the deadline has apparently moved to the end of August