Types of Software Projects

A friend of mine used to classify projects into 2 mutually exclusive categories:

Strategic or Political projects
Profitable projects

At first, I thought this classification was a joke, but after some contemplation, I found that it is very true… Most or almost all of the projects I worked in fell under the first category (strategic). This means that I was either always chosen to work in such projects or that all projects are strategic non-profitable ones!! Which of course cannot be true, so, let’s stick to the first assumption!

Strategic Projects Characteristics

First of all they are… Strategic!
Either start with quick-wins or are major-projects
Non-profitable
Low or no price quotation offered with pleasure to clients
Very tight in time
Killer teams are allocated on them
Strategic importance and priority only apply on the team who works in the project, i.e. not on other needed helper functions such as IS, DB or Operations teams
Teams working in them are burned out/destroyed after some time
Clients don’t accept the output
Clients don’t pay bills
Most of the times, such projects are discontinued after a while. Termination time is based on how much the company can endure the financial losses which by the way are looked at as sacrifices (not losses). Sometimes termination depends on the number of months the team spends sleepless
End catastrophically, catastrophe size varies from losing a team to losing a whole company in addition of course to losing the client himself and the company’s reputation

Profitable Projects Characteristics

Are not Strategic, this is obvious!
Are usually support projects (non-new-development)
Clients are billed on time and material basis

I think I might have worked in a profitable project once, but I can’t recall anything about it!

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