How to Ensure Your Software Projects Actually Finish

And avoid them becoming zombified

Ben Rogojan
Better Programming
Published in
6 min readJul 30, 2019

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Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash

It’s Monday morning.

You struggle to get out of bed.

Your energy is drained.

It’s time to head to work and tackle that death march of a project again.

Somehow this project has been passed around to several teams and yet… it never seems to actually get finished.

Instead, like an undead zombie, it continues to haunt the living. Every implementation team handed the unfinished monstrosity struggles to grasp the scope and complexity.

Management has already poured millions of dollars into getting the technology implemented but it just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Instead of analyzing the root cause of the problem, they simply pour more money and time into the overall project.

This happens at almost every large company at all times. Companies spend millions of dollars to implement technology and sometimes it never gets delivered. Just ask Hertz who is currently suing Accenture for 32 million dollars over a failed project!

So how do you keep your next project from becoming a zombie?

In order to avoid zombifying projects, it is important to keep the momentum moving forward. This means quickly removing roadblocks when they come up, creating manageable milestones, and constantly communicating to ensure everyone is aware of the project’s status. In turn, this keeps projects moving forward and ensures all the stakeholders are on the same page.

Clear Roadblocks Right Away

Roadblocks happen every day in tech projects.

Maybe someone doesn’t have access to a data set, teams A and B don’t agree on the design, or perhaps you are awaiting approval for purchasing software from a director who has just gone on vacation.

Roadblocks can quietly drown projects if not dealt with as soon as possible.

In large companies, most technical teams are juggling multiple projects at once. This allows roadblocks to be used as an excuse as to why teams aren’t getting work done on your project; the roadblock relieves…

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