The Early Bird...

Timothy Johnson describes how he was fired for writing truthful project management reports. Well, the reports didn’t make the project manager look very good, so I imagine it must have been a wee bit awkward for all concerned. For you early birds, and no don’t look at me, the post also describes how he gets up at 4:30 a.m. (!!!) to exercise. Moving past that insanity, we come to the excerpt:

I was on a project a few years ago where I was working for an alarming scattered manager who informed me that she did not want me to write a weekly status report, monthly would do.  While I protested, she made it quite clear that it was not time she wanted "wasted" - there were other things to do.  Against my better judgment, I followed her lead.  When things "went south" on the project, she had me over a barrel as the needed documentation was not there.  I started doing weekly status reports as part of the project recovery and she terminated my contract as the frequent documentation surfaced the fact that she was the bottleneck of the project’s problems (which explained her earlier resistance).

Here at the Deck Chairs blog, we absolutely support denial and manipulation; after all, these fine qualities are great hallmarks of failed projects everywhere.