Mega-Projects

Taking a team on a never-ending mission, often described as "completely rewrite the (complicated subsystem X) roughly within a year" puts the team members' psychological endurance under pressure. Their efforts bring value to the organization only once the project is completed. When the path is long and the goal generic, even the most experienced contributors might lose faith in the feasibility of the whole endeavor.
Mega-Projects - Teamleadsky
How does this anti-pattern impact the team?
  • Impact
    The team gets overwhelmed by the complexity of the project and the scale of the effort required. Working for a long time against a generic goal that is too big to comprehend builds up the pressure. The team members start to get convinced that they are working on a project that will last forever and never complete. That kills the personal drive of the team members and their engagement, leading to a decline in the ability of the team to commit and Deliver work.
How can you spot this anti-pattern?
  • Signals
    • "Last year the CTO told the last deadline is end of December. Since then it was extended three times."
    • "The guys who have worked on this already left the company."
    • "It is a very complex engineering task."

    These signals are the "red flags", that indicate it is worth taking a closer look to check whether the anti-pattern is present.
Let's review this anti-pattern on different levels:
  • Events
    On the level of events we can see that none of the team members is able to explain clearly the scope of the project.
  • Patterns
    On the level of patterns we can observe that the team repeatedly has difficulties setting Product Goals.
  • Systems
    On the level of systems we can state that "Working on a project for a long period of time without reducing cognitive load drains the team."
Mega-Projects - Teamleadsky
  • Mental Models
    On the level of mental models we might find out e.g. that the business impact of the project is not defined clearly, and that has an impact on the implementation planning. As well it might be the case that more experienced team members do not recognize the need to set comprehensive goals for the less experienced contributors.
Written by Alex
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