ProjectConnections Horror Story Contest

One of our guest bloggers, Cinda Voegtli, is the CEO of ProjectConnections.com Cinda’s running a contest, and the prize is a copy of my new book “Scrappy Project Management.” We hope you will play along! Details below. – Kimberly Wiefling, Author, Scrappy Project Management.

Tell us your scariest project horror story and how you survived it, and win a copy of Scrappy Project Management by Kimberly Wiefling. “It was a dark and stormy project. I was reviewing status reports when the ninjas attacked …”

Is your resume dotted with jobs that end in “… and the project team was never heard from again”? Do you still have nightmares about the time the testing engineer quit right in the middle of a critical test phase? Is there a faint whiff of brimstone whenever your customer graces your review meetings?

We want to share your scariest, funniest, or most mind-boggling project horror stories. And since it takes a scrappy project manager to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, we think it’s only appropriate that the reward for your effort in sharing these stories be a copy of columnist Kimberly Wiefling’s new book, Scrappy Project Management. Just email your qualifying project horror story to [email protected] by Tuesday, 16 October 2007, and you’ll be eligible to win one of 20 paperback copies of Scrappy Project Management.

Please read the Official Rules for details before submitting your entry. By submitting an entry or entries, you agree to be bound by those rules. There is no minimum or maximum word limit on your story, but it must include:

• The setting. “It was a dark and stormy project” is permissible, but you’d do better to describe the project in a bit more detail.
• How the nightmare started. What were the signs? Were there any early warnings, or odd tapping sounds in the hallways? When did you know you were really in trouble? Was anyone wished into the cornfield?
• How you coped. How did the team react to the difficulty, and what steps were taken to correct the issue(s)? Be as specific as you can without violating any rules or confidences. This is the part everyone learns from.
• What finally happened? Did the project have a happy ending? Did anyone disappear mysteriously, left to wander a desert of unmonitored Gantt charts for all eternity? “And in a cold fiscal year, if you listen over the sound of the cappuccino machine, you can still hear them …”
• Bonus points if you also describe what lessons were learned, or what could have been done to solve or avoid the problem in the first place.

Again, please review the official rules before submitting an entry, to be sure your entry will qualify.

Contest entries will be judged by ProjectConnections staff on the basis of qualities like originality, humor, and creativity. You don’t have to be Hemmingway or Dorothy Parker, but we do want to see entries that have an air of authenticity and that are generally intelligible and coherent. Winners will be selected 19 October 2007 and notified by email during the week of 22 October 2007. Winning entries will be published online and winners will be announced on the ProjectConnections site and in our newsletter the week of 22 October. We did mention the Official Rules, right?

Time and ghost stories wait for no one, so submit your horror story right away!