Laurie has hit on a great point: long term projects can kill anyone's career. In this day and age where so much can change in just a business quarter, who the heck would ever sign up to lead/manage/work on a multi-year project?

Forget for just a moment the challenges of keeping a team motivated for that length of time, how is anyone going to go about getting funding year after year? The one thing that Laurie didn't talk about in her posting was how to solve this problem. That's ok, the kids over at Harvard Business school have a solution that just might work.

Their suggestion is to never have a monster project that you try to completely define at project kickoff and then watch get out of control. Instead, they suggest that you do a series of much smaller projects that deliver real, immediate benefits to the company. This way nobody has a chance to fall asleep because the positive results keep rolling in.

The thoughts are novel and appear to be good. Now let's see who's career takes off once they start to do IT projects this way.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting
www.blueelephantconsulting.com