Assuming that the conversation takes place after a mistake has been made, the confessor-priest should first ask how recent it was. If the mistake was made within the past day or two, it’s possible that it can be corrected/fixed/recovered; more about that in a moment. But in any case, it will still be fresh in everyone’s mind, and it will be considered “relevant” to all concerned. By contrast, suppose the project manager says to the confessor-priest, “This has been troubling me for months, and I have to get it off my chest: six months ago, I gave my key software engineer a performance review without any salary increase at all, because I was too chicken to fight for it with my VP…” Chances are that (a) it’s too late to do anything about it, and (b) the VP won’t remember or care if you decide to bring the issue up now, in an attempt to rectify the situation.

Obviously, one of the main things that confessor-priest needs to figure out is just how “serious” the mistake is (or was). It’s one thing for the project manager to say, “I made a mistake, and our 12-month project is going to be a day late.” It’s something else entirely if the project manager says, “I lost my temper, yelled at the whole project team at the top of my voice, and called them a bunch of childish idiots. When I came into the office this morning, I discovered that every single one of them has quit and left town — and they erased every bit of technical work they did from day one of the project.”

Also, as suggested above, the confessor-priest needs to determine whether the mistake is “recoverable.” Quite a few project-management mistakes turn out to be “human” issues — inopportune statements, insults, jokes, or comments that may have offended a subordinate or a superior. Left to fester, the mistake could have grave consequences; but a timely and sincere apology can often undo the damage, and perhaps even lead to a better working relationship in the future. (I emphasize “sincere” here, because I’ve noticed an all-too-common tendency, perhaps made palatable by politicians, movie stars, and other public figures, to say something utterly outrageous in public, and then offer a bland, passive-voice pseudo-apology along the lines of, “I regret that X was said. It should not have happened….”)

Unfortunately, sometimes the mistake cannot be undone — at least, not with the resources at the disposal of the errant project manager, and not even with the assistance of the confessor-priest. If the entire project team really did quit, and if they’ve got better-paying jobs working for a competitor, it may not be possible to get them back again. If the project manager failed to carry out the required risk-management planning, and didn’t have a contingency plan when something went utterly wrong (a certain oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico comes to mind…), there may not be any practical way to plug the leak, repair the damage, and get things back on course.

All of this typically leads to one of four recommended actions on the part of the confessor priest, when the project-manager “sinner” describes the details of the mistake that he or she has made:

• ignore it — some mistakes really aren’t that bad. And some are “mistakes” only in the sense that they violate bureaucratic rules that had no meaningful impact on the project anyway
• fix it — it may cost money, it may take time, and it may take extra work — but many mistakes really can be rectified. Of course, the sooner you acknowledge it, and the sooner you ask for help and/or begin taking remedial action, the better off you are.
• ask for forgiveness, and vow never to do it again — if the mistake was a human-relations blunder of some kind (e.g., needlessly annoying/insulting a key member of the project team), it may be sufficient to grovel and beg for forgiveness. I find it amazing how rarely management-level people are willing to publicly (and sincerely!) acknowledge their mistakes; more often, they try to stonewall the situation, and bluff their way through it. But asking for forgiveness often works only once; the second time you tell your spouse that you’ve had an affair, and that you’re terribly sorry and really won’t do it again … well, it’s not likely to be very convincing.
• acknowledge defeat — hopefully it won’t happen very often, but let’s face it: sometimes you make a mistake that’s really serious, non-recoverable, and completely unacceptable no matter how much groveling and apologizing you do. If you were the Apple engineer that left the iPhone4 prototype behind in the bar a few months ago, chances are the best thing you could do would be to write a short, polite resignation letter and shove it under Steve Jobs’ door. But even here, sooner is better than later; and taking ownership/responsibility for the mistake (rather than making excuses, or trying to blame it on someone else) is the honorable thing to do.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss what the IT confessor-priest should do if the project-manager sinner warns him of a mistake that he or she is tempted to commit, but has not yet actually committed…

Or consider this variation: the troubled project manager walks into my office, tells me he hasn’t done anything extreme yet, but wonders if I’ll tell him that it’s okay to shoot the obnoxious member of his project team right between the eyes, and then defend him if senior management becomes unhappy about the situation. What should I tell the project manager?

Admittedly, these are extreme situations, and it’s entirely hypothetical. Maybe it happens in a war zone, but it certainly doesn’t happen in a normal IT project environment. In any case, it’s never happened to me. But the fundamental question still remains: where do you draw the line if/when serious ethical conflicts arise?

While the term “confessor priest” may be useful for the discussions in this series of blog postings, it’s important to remember that the consultants who play this role are not priests, in any official sense of the word. Nor are they journalists, with the legal option of protecting their “confidential sources.” It’s highly unlikely that they are psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, or anything else that would allow them to claim that statements from their project-manager “sinners” were confidential.

It’s one thing to negotiate a consulting agreement with an IT organization, in which the “confessor priest” states that his conversations with the project-manager “sinners” are confidential. And it’s one thing to refuse a demand to divulge those confidential details to a senior executive in the IT organization. Indeed, the consultant who takes on the role of “confessor priest” should be prepared to resign immediately if pressed on this issue. But if you’re questioned by the police, or the FBI, or a lawyer in a courtroom, it’s a different matter altogether; while I’m not qualified to offer legal advice, I’m pretty confident that the confessor-priest will have to answer questions, and reveal confidences, in situations like this.

So it’s important for the project-manager “sinners” who are thinking of asking for help to know that the “confessor priest” cannot help them if they have broken the law, or violated regulatory procedures and restrictions — especially when it comes to capital crimes, felonies, and things of that sort. Obviously, most project managers don’t run around murdering the members of their project team … but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a project manager could misrepresent an expenditure on an expense account or a procurement request, in order to provide some much-needed personal relief (e.g., a weekend of R&R at the beach) for an overworked member of his project team, which would be automatically rejected if requested through official channels.

The real issue typically involves “administrative” rules, and bureaucratic restrictions that kill productivity, frustrate the project team, and dampen morale to the point where the members of the project team have no energy or enthusiasm for their project. For example, one of the project team members wants to work at home from his laptop for a couple days, because his wife and kids are sick with the flu. One of the programmers wants to disable the company-installed Muzak system, because it’s driving him crazy having to listen to Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby crooning over the PA system all day long. One of the network engineers desperately wants to take a day off in the middle of the week — against company rules — to attend a Rolling Stones farewell concert in a city 300 miles away, but says that he’ll make up for it by working both Saturday and Sunday.

These examples may or may not sound realistic, and they may or may not seem like issues worth making a fuss about. But there are issues worth making a fuss about, and the list of possibilities is endless. After he has agreed to such a request, the project manager may develop a guilty conscience, and may shuffle into the confessor-priest’s office and ask whether he has, in fact, committed a mortal sin.

The confessor-priest has to rely on his own experience, judgment, common sense, and gut instincts about what’s practical, what’s fair, and what “crosses the line” into areas that cannot be condoned or forgiven. Given the same situation, two different confessor-priests might make two different decisions; after all, we’re not talking about a formal religion, and there is no “Bible” to tell us exactly what we should do in every circumstance.

In my case, for example, I’m a firm believer in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to overlooking infractions of minor administrative/bureaucratic rules; but if asked a direct and specific question about such an infraction, I won’t lie to a senior executive in order to protect a project-manager “sinner.” At the same time, if I thought I was going to be interrogated by senior management about every possible infraction that might or might not have been committed, I wouldn’t take the assignment in the first place; or I would resign from the assignment as soon as it became clear that such a “corporate culture” was in place.

Again, everyone will have different opinions, assumptions, expectations, and behaviors when it comes to such ethical issues. It’s something for both the potential confessor-priest and the project-management sinners to think about before the issues arise … because, sooner or later, they will arise.

On to another aspect of the IT project confessional tomorrow…

But there’s an obvious analogy: suppose company X has hired me — just to use a silly example, because it’s easier for me to write in first-person form — as the IT project priest. An announcement is sent out, inviting troubled project managers to schedule a meeting with me. The date of my visit is publicized, and people are told that it’s okay to show up at the office where I’ve been sequestered, even if they haven’t formally scheduled a meeting.

So I show up, sit in my office with a nice cup of coffee and bran muffin, and catch up on my e-mail while waiting for someone to appear. Time passes, and I finish my e-mail; nobody has appeared. So I read the New York Times, spend a few minutes on the crossword puzzle before giving up in frustration, and reorganize my to-do list for the umpteenth time. Before I know it, the morning has slipped away; and after a quiet lunch alone (after all, nobody wants to be seen in public with the notorious “confessional priest”), I return to the empty office for an equally quiet afternoon.

What can we conclude from all of this?

If it’s a small IT organization, with only one or two project managers, maybe it means that nobody has any serious problems … at least, not now. Maybe there really are problems, but the project managers don’t know about them. Or maybe everything is actually on schedule, and all of the technical staff members, as well as the business users and key stakeholders, are perfectly happy. It may seem a little strange, but it’s not completely impossible.

In a large IT organization, it really is impossible. Well, maybe not completely impossible — but highly unlikely. Considering the industry statistics about how many IT projects are behind schedule, over budget, filled with bugs, and unable to meet user requirements, you would think there would be a long line of desperate IT managers lined up outside my office, hoping to receive either a miracle cure or a promise of forgiveness and absolution.

Also, why do you think I was brought here in the first place? Unlike “real” priests, I don’t operate as a non-profit charity, and I don’t rely on donations to pay the rent each month (nor do I live in a rent-free vicar’s mansion here in NYC). The decision to bring me in for this purpose is almost always made (and, more importantly, paid for) by a senior-level IT executive who knows that (a) lots of projects are in trouble, and (b) lots of project managers are frustrated, discouraged, and threatening to quit. That would make it even more likely that several people would be lined up outside my door (or sending me e-mail messages asking when they can meet with me).

But there’s actually something far more fundamental to consider: most project managers know when they’ve made a mistake, and when they’re in trouble. Maybe not the most junior managers, who are tackling their first project; and maybe not the most stubborn ones, who are determined to bull their way through any obstacle thrown in front of them. But most project managers are reasonably intelligent, and reasonably aware of what’s going on around them; and at least in the U.S. (though not necessarily in other countries), they operate in a culture where their subordinates will voice their opinions about how well (or poorly) the project is proceeding.

So an absence of people lining up to meet with the IT “confessor priest” usually means one thing: there is a strong atmosphere of fear and distrust in the organization, and none of the project managers are willing to take the risk that senior management will somehow find out they’ve reached out for help. In such an organization, there probably aren’t many people taking advantage of company-sponsored programs to help with problems of alcoholism, drug abuse, or marital problems. When it comes to project management problems, many IT organizations operate in a style not so different from the infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” standard currently being debated in the U.S. military.

As indicated in a previous blog posting, the project confessional is supposed to be confidential. But if the “confessor priest” sits in an empty office at the end of the hall, far too many people can see the “sinner” project manager walking down that hall for a meeting. Meetings can be scheduled via e-mail, and can take place outside the office environment; but in some organizations, people are paranoid about their e-mail and text messages being intercepted. Whether real or not, the perception of such “Big Brother” oversight is enough to keep them away.

I don’t have any magical solutions for this kind of problem; all I can do is report to senior management that the level of fear and distrust is greater than they had imagined and/or acknowledged. A significant culture-change has to take place before the project-confessional concept can be put into practice, and that usually requires a different type of consulting engagement altogether.

Fortunately, this scenario is not very common. While I can’t promise absolute secrecy, it’s not too difficult to create enough privacy and confidentiality to satisfy most people. Meetings can be arranged via e-mail, but with the proviso that corporate e-mail be avoided. My cell phone number can be made available, and people can call me from someplace suitably private. And, in most organizations, people aren’t that terrified of making contact with me…

Indeed, think of it this way: if a project manager has made some mistakes, and if the project is in trouble, that fact is not likely to be a secret. Well, maybe it’s a secret today, because the project team and senior management have not yet become aware of the project manager’s blunder … but it’s only a matter of time. So, before things get completely out of control, and before the project manager has completely lost whatever options might be available to remedy the problem, he or she will often feel motivated to go find someone trustworthy they can talk to…

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the project manager’s mistake was really serious, or that it broke the law. We’ll discuss that in the next blog posting…

Stay tuned.

Before we delve into the more subtle issues associated with such a confessional, I want to cover the basics … and before I do that, I want to acknowledge that this is not some crazy idea that I thought up all by myself. The IT Project Confessional was one of many novel and innovative ideas developed over a period of several years, starting in the early 1990s, by a group of IT consultants and educators who gathered together in an unpaid, voluntary effort known as the “Airlie Council,” to offer suggestions and advice to the U.S. Department of Defense for improving their software procurement, acquisition, and development efforts; the group included such well-known names as Tom DeMarco, Capers Jones, Vic Basili, Susan Tinch Johnson, Frank McGrath, Tom McCabe, and others. Oh, yeah, and me.

The Airlie Council, formally known as the Software Program Manager’s Network (SPMN) operated through the 1990s, until its funding was cut off in 2001; some of its products and ideas have been preserved by a Washington-based consulting firm called American Systems, and can be found here on the Internet. Among the innovative ideas concocted by the group were such things as compiling a set of known “worst practices” to complement (and offset) the traditional “best practices” created in many organizations, as well as a “project breathalyzer” test to help make a quick assessment of the likelihood of an IT project running amok and failing catastrophically.

As for the project confessional concept: it became evident that the massive DoD organization had “politics” that were every bit as intense as what one would find almost anywhere else. If you were one of, say, 10 junior officers of approximately equal rank, and if you knew that roughly half of you might get promoted within the next year or so, chances that that you wouldn’t want to blurt openly about your mistakes, weaknesses, and screw-ups. And if your superior officer was a gruff, no-nonsense person whose management approach consisted mostly of yelling at people, or reassigning them to the U.S. equivalent of Siberia, then you probably wouldn’t want to tell such an officer that you had just made a serious mistake on a mission-critical IT project under your command.

And so the idea of a “confessional” evolved. The idea was that one of us would visit a military base or IT development organization where several projects were underway, and let it be known that we were available for “free” consulting about any project-management issues and problems that anyone wanted to talk about. Anyone who wanted to meet with us could contact us directly to schedule a time and place; most of the meetings were about an hour long, but they could be longer or shorter depending on the needs of the individual.

There was an agreement that our conversations were confidential, to encourage frank discussions. On the other hand, most of us (probably all of us) Airlie Council consultants had no military security clearance, so the project managers knew there was a boundary separating that which they could conceivably discuss with us, and that which was off limits. I mention this primarily because it also meant that certain “categories” of mistakes, or project decisions, were generally off-limits, and would not come up for discussion.

And I mention that point because even in a non-military/unclassified IT organization, there may be a boundary between things that the confessional “priest” can keep confidential, and things that he or she cannot. If a project manager says to me, “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned: I took a thousand dollars from petty cash to buy a plane ticket for my star programmer, so he could spend the weekend gambling in Las Vegas,” that obviously poses a serious ethical problem. We’ll come back to this point in a future blog posting…

In any case, the project-confessional meeting is usually over at the end of an hour or so; and there are several possible outcomes. Sometimes, the “priest” can offer immediate advice — even if it’s something unpleasantly negative like, “Sorry, kid, but I see no miracle cure for you; your project is doomed. Better update your resume, and try to be brave to tell your boss now that that you’ve made an irrecoverable mistake.” Of course, sometimes the immediate advice is positive, with some simple suggestions for solving the problem.

Of course, many real-world problems are not so simple that they can be solved on the spot, no matter how experienced the “priest” may be; thus, there may be an informal agreement that the “priest” will contemplate the situation for a day or two, and then communicate a brief recommendation by phone or secure e-mail. A followup meeting may be appropriate, especially if additional questions or discussion are required to understand the nuances of the problem; but this should not be considered the beginning of an ongoing, open-ended consulting relationship.

On the other hand, sometimes the best advice that the “priest” can offer is that some kind of ongoing consulting assistance is needed — perhaps to solve an ongoing technical problem, or perhaps to continue offering some management-related advice and guidance. To avoid conflict-of-interest problems, the “priest” will generally not recommend his own services; but any recommendation is likely to open a can of worms, since (a) it means additional fees and expenses will probably be involved, and (b) it almost certainly means that the details of the problem (i.e., the one that caused the “confessional” meeting in the first place), and the long-term solution to the problem, will become known to the “sinner’s” peers and superiors. Again, we’ll discuss this in more detail in a future blog posting.

So that’s the basic idea of a project confessional. It’s probably not the sort of thing you would be likely to see in a small IT organization with 10 programmers and 2 project managers. But it’s the kind of thing that could be extremely practical and helpful in a large IT organization with a few thousand technical staff members, a few hundred managers, and several dozen development projects underway at any given time.

More to come … stay tuned.

Or maybe it was something else; maybe something you forgot to do, some budget report you forgot to submit, some paperwork to keep the bureaucrats and bean-counters from making your team even more miserable than they already are. Whatever it is, it’s going to cost your project some precious resources, or add to the bureaucratic burden, or somehow put the project at much greater risk of delay or outright failure.

That being the case, wouldn’t it be great if you could find a quiet confessional booth somewhere, and whisper to a kind old priest inside the booth, “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned…”?

The problem faced by many of today’s IT managers is that they know they’ve made a mistake — but (a) it’s not obvious to them how they can undo, work-around, or rectify that mistake, and (b) there’s nobody they can talk to. For whatever reason, they feel that they can’t talk to their subordinates (after all, they’re the boss!), and they can’t talk to their fellow-manager peers … and most of all, they dare not confess their mistake to their boss. Why not? Because their boss would have a hysterical fit, or fire the errant project-manager on the spot; and his/her peers would sharpen their knives, and begin figuring out how to take advantage of the mistake when it comes time to award promotions, raises, and bonuses.

I don’t want to suggest that it’s like this for all companies; there must be a friendly, supportive IT organization out there somewhere. And it’s not an “all-or-nothing” situation: if you’ve made a mistake but know how to fix it, you can sometimes enlist the cooperation of your subordinates (“we’re in this together, guys, and I’ll really owe you one if you help me out). Indeed, you might be able to make an apologetic confession to your boss, if the mistake isn’t too expensive to fix …

But there are an awful lot of situations where that won’t work… and this series of blog postings is about the formal creation of an “IT Project Confessional” to provide a neutral, objective, confidential, no-risk (well, probably low-risk) mechanism for project managers to seek advice and guidance so they can recover from their mistakes and ultimately succeed with their projects.

As you can imagine, things are a little more difficult in the “real world” of an IT organization than they are in the priest’s confessional booth: you can’t just tell the sinner, “Repent, say three ‘hail Mary’s,’ vow to never commit such a sin again, and you will be forgiven.” Here are some of the topics I’ll be covering in the days ahead:

• Finding sinners – how do you get people to admit they might need help?
• Protecting the confidentiality of project managers discussing their mistakes
• Ethics: what if the project manager has violated a law or government regulation?
• Types of advice – should you tell the sinner to quit, work harder, confess publicly, or something else?
• Categories of project management sins: venal sins and cardinal sins
• Resisting pressure from higher-level executives who say to the confessional priest, “Off the record, no names mentioned, tell me what’s going on…”
• Forgiveness — is it possible? Practical?
• Anticipating a sin – what to do if the project manager says, “I haven’t sinned yet, but I know I’m about to…”
• Measuring results
• Providing follow-up references and resources for ongoing help
• Setting up a “Sinners Anonymous” for project managers who want to network and share their experiences with other sinners

Stay tuned … and if you know any project-management sinners out there, tell them to take a look, and offer their own ideas, experiences, and opinions…

For example, we know that “social media” — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and several other examples — are becoming ever more popular, and also ever more important as an “influence” in society. As of January 2010, for example, Twitter had 75 million users (see “Twitter now has 75M users; most asleep at the mouse“, in the Jan 26, 2010 issue of Computerworld); and while Computerworld felt it was important to emphasize that “a lot of current Twitterers are inactive,” it’s also true that those who do Twitter have a disproportionate influence. It’s not just Oprah and Ashton Kutcher, with their multi-million Twitter armies, but the fact that that protesters and dissidents and ordinary citizens are using Twitter to communicate news more quickly and more effectively than the traditional media.

Cynics might well argue that 75 million is actually a very small fraction — just over 1% — of the global population. But Facebook has a user base that is estimated to be approaching 500 million. True, that’s still less than 10% of the global population; but as of April 2009, it was the fifth largest “country” in the world with a mere 200 million users (see “200 Million Strong,” in an April 8, 2009 posting on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s blog)… which means that, by now, it’s the third largest country in the world, with only China and India ahead of it.

Of course, Facebook (and MySpace, and the various others like it) is only a “virtual” country; it doesn’t have an army, it doesn’t have a Parliament, and it doesn’t have a seat at the United Nations. But maybe it should … and maybe it will. Probably not in the next 5-10 years, but it does suggest that we should start paing more attention to the blurring of “real life” and “virtual life.” Thus far, most of our attention has focused on the “virtual life” of individuals (see, for example, the excellent book, Life on the Screen, by Sherry Turkle), or relatively small “virtual communities” of individuals, in places like SecondLife.

We’ll know that things have changed irrevocably when Facebook (or MySpace or Twitter, or whatever) achieves some significant political accomplishment, such as getting a major politican elected or thrown out of office. Note that that’s completely different than the “top-down” efforts by politicians (e.g., Barack Obama) to use social media to help promote their own campaigns.

The social/political impact of future IT will, of course, become all the more important as computing becomes more ubiquitous. You’ll recall that I discussed this in part 5 of this thread of blogs (you’ve memorized all this stuff, right?), and suggested that in another 5-10 years, we might well find that a majority of the human race will have non-trivial computing devices, even if it takes the form of a mobile phone. So, if Facebook (and/or its cousins) grows from 500 million users to 5 billion users, there are bound to be some significant social/cultural consequences — the details of which I’m incapable of predicting with any specificity.

One thing is fairly obvious, though: if we’ve got 5 billion people using computers, the majority of them will be located in what we casually refer to as “third world” countries … or, more politely, “developing countries.” That means the applications that dominate the worldwide computing environment probably won’t be the ones that currently dominate the marketplace in advanced/developed countries. They might be “simple” applications that we have relegated to a back corner, like e-mail or texting; or they might be games that we’ve never seen before. Or they might be something else entirely … in any case, what creates this dominance will be culture, not technology.

One last observation, which I’ll just summarize — even though it probably deserves several blog postings on its own: the relationship between government and members of society will change, and the boundary between government and citizens will blur. I can make some educated guesses about the general nature of this change, but the details of how and when … I simply don’t know.

As for the “relationship”: recall that in part 12 of this thread, we discussed the phenomenon of resistance to change. Specifically, to the extent that new technology threatens to disrupt established political (power) structures, and/or social and religious cultures, it will almost certainly threaten to disrupt established laws, regulations, and other forms of codified behavior.

Of course, most societies have organized methods for changing their existing laws and regulations, but (a) it takes a long time, and (b) it tends to operate from the top down. Yeah, yeah, the people at the grass roots can elect new representatives, Presidents, and Prime Ministers; but unless you live in a society that operates with a “direct” town-hall-style consensus, the reality is that the day-to-day establishment of laws and codes and regulations comes from the folks at the top. And (a) they’re likely to be the same ones who were at the top five years ago, and (b) they’re likely to be 50 or 60 years old, if not older, and (c) they still haven’t figured out e-mail.

But all of that could change if you get a “Facebook army” that’s determined to make some changes. We got a minor taste of this when Twitter got used by the protesters in Iran after their controversial election last year … and I think that was just the beginning.

The other aspect of government is this: in the best of all worlds (without getting into the usual debates between liberals and conservatives), we expect government to do the things that we (individuals) cannot do for ourselves. I don’t expect a “Facebook army” to acquire guns or tanks or planes, and thus replace the government’s army and air force; and I don’t expect the “Facebook army” to start building the next generation of roads and bridges and tunnels.

But they might take on some of the responsibilities for repairing the roads and bridges and tunnels. Well, maybe even that is too much, since they’re unlikely to have the heavy equipment. But to the extent that any of this (even national defense) depends upon effective communication and collaboration — that much can be done by a Facebook army. What it means is that a lot of governmental organizations — bureaucratic committees and agencies and authorities — might find that their services were no longer needed.

Is this likely to happen in the next 5-10 years? Obviously, not completely … and maybe not at all. But it could happen little by little, without make a lot of noise, and thus without creating a lot of resistance. Want an example? Take a look at Clever Commute, and subscribe to the Clever Commute blog — I think it’s an exemplar of things to come.

Even if my presentation is utterly boring, there will be free pizza and snacks … but apparently no free beer. Hey, you can’t have everything…

In a desperate attempt to keep my presentation from putting you to sleep within the first 30 seconds, I’m considering doing cartwheels across the room, and perhaps a hand-stand on the lectern. I’ve also included some video clips at unexpected spots in the presentation, which will hopefully draw a few giggles, snorts, and guffaws. And I’ve sent an email invitation to Madonna, asking her to join us for a cameo presentation … but she hasn’t responded thus far.

If you can’t join us in beautiful downtown Bedford for the event, you can download a PDF version of the presentation — though it doesn’t contain the video clips. Don’t complain: if you want the whole package, you gotta be there in person…

To download the 5.21 megabyte PDF file, click on the icon below, or click here.

I’m here in Rome this week, presenting a two-day seminar on  “Managing Death-March Projects” for Technology Transfer Institute. You should be there so you can hear whatever clever jokes may occur to me while I’m presenting my material, as well as the comments and questions from the other participants. But if you’re stuck in some other part of the world, or you couldn’t persuade your boss to send you to Rome, you can click here to download the (17MB) PDF version of the presentation, which has a whole  bunch of embedded links to other presentations, publications, books, articles, websites, etc.