The Project Saboteur... and how to kill him

by Jeroen Gietema

Every project has opponents who try to manipulate it so that the result better suits them. A naive idea? Hardly! People have the inclination to adjust truth to suit themselves and thus serve their own interests: more power, more income, more respect. Even though it is rampant, little attention has been paid until now to the art of undermining and manipulating projects. And yet annually many millions of Euros are squandered as a result of project sabotage. If more attention is given to the motivation and methods of project saboteurs, this will lead to large savings and better project results. This book explains how to sabotage a project, the motivations that guide the project saboteur, the alliances the project saboteur might make, and most importantly, how to stop him. It includes real-life case studies, examples, and helpful check lists and tables to determine if there's a project saboteur at work.

134 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 29, 2016

Reviews

[Claret Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

So insightful about why good projects go wrong. And it's amusing and fun too. Full of cartoons and facts, stories and recent research, it's a timeless book for everyone who has ever worked on any project.

[BCS · Rating 4 out of 5]

The primary objective of this book is to teach you how to become a project saboteur, but in doing so it is designed to provide a lesson in how to identify such people and nullify their threat to the health of the project.

The book identifies a number of levels at which the project saboteur can operate - Director, Project Manager, User, Specialist and Consultative Committee member. It also details, at each of those levels, the forms that sabotage can take and how to counter these threats to the project.

This book was originally written in Dutch, but has been translated and updated with some examples of UK project failures.

There is also a largely German/Dutch reading list, to which I would add a book reviewed by the BCS a couple of years ago - The Anatomy of IT Projects: why they’re hard, and why they fail by Mark Seneschall.

It’s not until the very end of the book that you will find any material devoted to the project saboteur in the Agile environment. As for PRINCE, the authors have a separate title, Project Saboteur and PRINCE2.

This is a fairly generic book about projects and project management, so little or no IT technical knowledge is required.

For those studying or involved in project management/change management (either student or employee) it can provide some useful background material into the human factors involved in project management and project success/failure.

It’s not overly long either - 150 pages, A5 size.

Review by Mike Rees MBCS CITP, IT Consultant
Originally posted: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/...

[Dide · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was really helpful. The examples, tables and especially the check lists were very useful and I will definitely keep using these. The information is also given in a clear and fun way, making the book a great read. I would recommend this book to anyone who has to work in teams and on projects since you absolutely have to know when a project saboteur is working against you.

[Roan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bet everyone at some point has had a saboteur in his/her project. And besides that, it is always possible to improve the synergy and quality of groups and their projects. I think that this book is a must-read if you work in groups often!