Chainsaw on a rope swing

by John on May 31, 2011

Here’s something I wish I’d understood early in my career. From Merlin Mann:

If a project doesn’t have an owner, it’s like a chainsaw on a rope swing. Why would anyone even go near that?

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Ben Deaton 05.31.11 at 08:07: The completion Merlin’s sentences that begin with “That’s like…” constitutes probably half of why I listen to this podcast.
2 Abraham Piper 05.31.11 at 15:05: Was really hoping for a video…
3 Wedge 05.31.11 at 19:08: Sadly such things are far too common in large organizations. It seems like it would be worthwhile to have a team who assumed and/or assigned ownership to ownerless projects, or some sort of policy that prevented people from using such projects.
4 John 05.31.11 at 19:16: Perhaps worse than a project with no owner is a project with a powerful owner who doesn’t care about the project. The project is important in the sense that the worker bees will be held responsible for seeing it happen, but not so important that it’s worth the owner’s time to help. “This is important for you to develop, but not important enough for me to take the time to tell you in any detail what it should be.”
5 Mike Swaim 06.01.11 at 08:21: I actually have a work item like that (powerful owner, who doesn’t care much). It’s a priority 2 work item that would take maybe 5 minutes to do, but it requires the requestor tell me what they actually want. After the first year, I mentioned closing it out, but they still wanted it done, and would “get back to me soon.” Now I’m just keeping it around for the amusement factor.
6 Patrick 06.02.11 at 00:58: HEY. FREE CHAINSAW!!!