General Failure, Major Disaster, Private Sorrow

  Telecommunications  

"My first experience with the military and government really shook me to the core, not just as a project manager, but as a taxpayer," Sara Jones sighs. "What a big waste of time and money! We had a superior product that could have—and should have—worked!"

Sara is young, but not new to project management. However, her first experience dealing simultaneously with the government and military was working on a huge contract to implement a multimillion-dollar telecommunications system. She was eager to do good work and ready for the challenge of helping to overhaul military and secure communications worldwide.

"It all started when General I. M. Smartte decided to modernize the military’s antiquated secure telecommunications all over the world. To save money, he decided to use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software. After a rigorous bidding process, my company, Deep-Pitt, was chosen as having the product most suitable to do the job. No COTS software is ready to go straight out of the box, including ours. It had to be customized to suit special needs. On direct orders from the general himself, project managers from the product vendor (me and my team!) were assigned to work closely on customization and implementation with all government and military agencies that would be affected.

I got my passport and …

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