Coping With A Failing Software Project

[@HealthyDev]

I hope by sharing these stories of how I dealt with two failing software projects, I'm able to convince you to avoid blaming and instead rise to the occasion of doing your best despite the outcome. Let me know any thoughts or questions you have below.

[@TheMarko1692]

This channel is a hidden goldmine! It really helps us younger and inexperienced developers out there put the problems we face to a perspective that would otherwise take failure and years of experience to reach! Thank you for that!

[@HealthyDev]

Glad it’s helping you! That’s why I do this. 👍

[@samsarasap4911]

@@HealthyDev GOD BLESS YOU REALLY

[@vulpixelful]

I have never resonated more with a tech career channel. The kind of toxic positivity that takes hold in some dev shops just for the sake of the sale, and the devs sacrificed in the process...totally a real thing. I've been through this and felt alone, but I was really being gaslit when I brought up concerns.

[@alexbarker4832]

I am so glad I found this channel. After 20+ years in the industry myself, burnout really hit me hard. This channel has really helped me find a more positive attitude and gave me the boost I needed to start digging myself out. I can't thank you enough for putting these videos out there.

[@HealthyDev]

It makes me so happy to hear this helped you. Thanks!!

[@mywetaresocks_8959]

I'm currently in a similar situation as you did...this is my first job ever and most of the devs (including me) have no experience in building the software. I screwed up on my code which resulted in delay but then I realised a lot of people screwed up too, but because I was quick to point out 'I screwed up', all the blame is on me.

[@HealthyDev]

Sorry. Yeah owning a mistake can be difficult but it also gets respect on a team of quality people. If you’re working in a culture of fear with a lot of politics, that’s another story...

[@rath6599]

I found that this is an excellent test when joining a new company: The very first mistake you make, own it, and watch the reactions like a hawk. If the culture is good (for me), there won't be any nonesense. If people jump on you like it happened to you, that for me is a bad company.

[@jeremyshull8850]

Great video! Not many people talk of the realities of software development. Your thought process of dealing with it and keeping an eye on remaining mentally healthy and positive resonated with me. Thanks!!

[@HealthyDev]

Happy to help Jeremy!

[@ashish2537]

7:00 The guilt trip - that really hurts.

[@kulman4295]

You have more patience and empathy than me, I would have gotten angry at that project with the angry fighting programmers and would have had a hard time to help them. I personally experienced being blamed by another programmer who did btw not want to work on anything than his very limited - but important - part of the project, and I cant deal with such behavior well. Looking back, i should have stopped him blaming me, and the team I was leading, right there and I should have put clear limits to that behavior. But as an external consultant, i dont know if i would have had the patience to deal with such behavior.

[@Supe204]

Ive been backend developer for 4 years last year was in a bank... all I did was mundane change requests and incidents resolved no impressive projects or real achievements.. I did automated letters generating app but then got rejected and never used... then I was assigned with a project to consume external API for financial information analysis but I couldn't complete that project because of my lack of integration knowledge... lots of dragged tasks never completed work and when I deliver something it's usually not that big ... the reason I'm not fired yet because firing is not a thing in my organization currently .... I feel like a failure all the time and anxious to go to work and deal with my lack of skills and I feel like I will never be skilled in anything...

[@Bizmonger]

I've found that being aggressive to prevent failure labels me as hard to work with and not a team player because I dare to have high standards to encourage successful projects.

[@HealthyDev]

Wow, great feedback Scott. I can say I DEFINITELY empathize with this. It often feels like those not doing the work just don't want to hear anything difficult that requires them to reset expectations with whoever they report to - or their client. As I shared in my first story (where I tried to "raise the red flag" multiple times) often the best we can do is voice our concerns, and then continue - even knowing full well that the project is about to fail. This is something I'll probably continue to battle for the rest of my career as I already have. I think it's a great trait to have that you care so much about your projects. Never lose that! We can always get better at voicing our concerns in a softer way, but at the end of the day if others think we're too aggressive - that's more a reflection of them than us. Hang in there!

[@HealthyDev]

Lisa Gray thanks for the kind words Lisa. I hope you are able to get to a point of letting go of the outcome and just doing your best. It’s frustrating sometimes when management makes it seem like the weight of the project is on our shoulders. I’m getting better at realizing this is rarely the case. I hope I can help you with some of your challenges this year. Thanks for the feedback and your interest!

[@GuySymonds1]

This rings so true to me, I'm in the process of leaving a Software Developer role as I cannot help the project and after a year of fighting I feel like I am classed as hard work and not a team player. Passion is a double edged sword. Cheer Scott your post rings so true!

[@nicholaslogan5185]

I have this issue currently on my project. I ended up stepping down from leading the project in protest since management refused to reassess anything and we were /still are crushing the dev team into the ground to hit arbitrary goals.

[@gkri8390]

Exactly I said the design is flawed in the beginning. Now I'm not a team player

[@EonsHD]

Lol this is very relatable. I was on the client side. I joined this company as an SE. Most of their dev work was being done by an external agency. Project was a mess and already 1.5years behind schedule. Seemed obvious to me that it was still miles away from completion. They kept pushing beta launch back by 1-2 months even though it was probably a year of work remaining. They eventually got impatient, and fired and sued the external agency, then expected our team of three internal developers to wrap up the projects in 1 month. We said this is clearly impossible and unrealistic. So they found a new consulting firm who promised to rebuild the project from scratch in 1 month (LOL). Our leadership started acknowledging reality after 2 months. And proceeded to lay off our internal dev team, myself included. So idk how it’s going now, but 6 months later it still hasn’t launched 😂

[@Ris-v4w]

great example of learning from others experiences. thank you. i feel like i can relate to your stories although my situation is different, but at least it helps to hear others have went through struggles i am or i may be going through in the future. so thank you

[@toastybowl]

This genre of video slams. We take on these devidual transistor gates of processes & info flows, + most importantly with each other so rapidly. Yet, it's that freedom of expression between each other without fear - a willingness to clarify ourselves without defense, to ground ourselves in that shared vision or motivation which is the shape of the work itself. So much comes up within that product of expectation, & negotiation of our social fabric - I know childhood issues like attachment trauma completely warped my experience of routine meetings without my seeing it for many years. It's difficult to time box these choices or commit to systemic remedies unless your team & stakeholders are willing to surf the seas of risk & reward together So often like mentioned here is that 1st time experiences where we bring our own baggage on stage can be especially stressful & expensive. Having group discussion moderation or structure with historical notes might be a necessity on some level for these sorts of complexities + an articulation for leveraging AND pivoting from them

[@jimeiden2360]

It seemed like the sales people were trying to sell the client on Agile for Agile sake. Trying to convince the client to jump on the Agile bandwagon but the Client had a waterfall perspective.

[@zaldabus]

Your experience word for word was exactly my experience last year on the project I was a part of. So much so I’m questioning if we worked for the same company 😅

[@lukeyd2000]

Working for a consultancy, I turned up to the client's office and attended a meeting with a fellow developer, my Manager and the Product Owner. It started with an overview of the product we would be building and ended with us having to estimate the entire project right there and then. I raised my concerns about the estimates being useless during the meeting and more in-depth to my manager separately, and was told that the estimates were not rigid. However, as the project progressed I learned that this was not the case and the estimates were being used with a temporal weighting. During the project, the hardware we were interfacing with was not documented sufficiently and bugs that surfaced during development could not be patched without an entire replacement of the hardware shipped from the manufacturers, taking weeks at a time. Throughout this my colleague and myself were the martyrs for the project delay, despite the continuous affirmation of project related issues. In the end the project was released lacking features that were required and it ran over the deadline several weeks and there was little to no satisfaction in having "completed" it. I've seen this time and time again and it's a contributor to several reasons why I have taken a break from the industry.

[@HealthyDev]

Glad to hear you're getting some rest. I'm so sorry you had to put up with that, nobody should.

[@robertvanhoose2437]

I endured this for several years at my previous gig. Unrealistic promises by management turned every effort into a death march. Such that, even though the team did heroic things and delivered valuable results, they were undervalued (because they were "late") and any satisfaction that we might have realized was stolen. Completely toxic and destructive for morale.

[@AlexBagheri]

Howdy, I’ve recently found your channel, and was wondering if there was any way you could do this video from the point of view of other team members, such as project managers, customer success, and product marketing. I’ve been struggling while working as a GTM strategist for a large Media company who just released their first SaaS Cloud product, and it’s been like pulling teeth getting things done. How do you cope with teams that are uncooperative?

[@Red_Sincara]

I have no idea what most this lingo is 💀. However you’re a great story teller so thanks for the video!

[@GuySymonds1]

We have had a joke on our project that we are the band on the Titanic and we'll keep playing as all goes to hell around us.

[@HealthyDev]

Ha! Sorry 😕

[@GuySymonds1]

@@HealthyDev no need to be sorry I've learned more this past year that the previous three. 👍

[@sairohitgupta8756]

Hi jamee, i am in a situation where my project Manager is supportive and the team lead is supportive and understanding and a tech lead who dosent seem to be really a tech lead , basically this person was a replacement to another one , and this person initially for 2 months tagged along with all the devs collecting info about project , and i this person was not helpful with regards to tech problems we faced , or she was not helpful with regards to team collboration , this person tries being good and pushing blame to the devs , and i have already taken the concern and also there was a small kinda cold war as i have taken this concern to the lead and PM , so i really dont know how to deal with people like this in the project , this person basically when ever allocates somework even if the work is least priority this person says it as the highest priority asap to be done.

[@HealthyDev]

Hey there. Interpersonal conflict between team members is something I can't really address in a comment, I'm sorry. There's just too much other context and questions I'd need answered. If you have a budget and need help, I do help with this sort of thing through career coaching on my website.

[@ericlemes]

Hey Jayme. I've been a software engineer for 26 years and I can relate to a lot of the content you produce, specially the psychological side of things. This video grabbed my attention about how all the failures you mentioned are totally related with people dynamics and anything to do with technical problems. Great stuff.

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks Eric, appreciate the feedback and encouragement! Glad you found some of this stuff helpful. 👍

[@gkri8390]

Experiencing same thing now,iam marking in jira .but scrum master are misled by 2 developers who r there in my team and her boss is believing her.actually design is flawed and estimates are rushed

[@toastybowl]

It's like the classic example of the technical guys who don't have their heads around humanities issues whatsoever, in some cases

[@ab1577]

Which mic do you use sir?

[@HealthyDev]

Hey, it's a Rode NT-1A that was modded by Michael Joly.

[@vensys8706]

The fear of failure itself will cause the failure!

[@jakublesniak2637]

Why would you ever want to encourage people to stay in such a disfuntional situation? It's the worst thing you can actually do. Sales people that sell projects like that should get fired on the spot and every developer should run away as quickly as possible. I've been through projects like that and it's never a good idea to stay. It has tremendous consequences for everyone involved and is simply not worth it. You did not name it, but the force behind that project is called greed. Greedy sales people don't care about what happens next - only their commission is important to them. Unfortunately in US a lot of people still think like you do and its feeding that pathological behaviors. Next time : run!!!

[@gkri8390]

Scrum master always take all projects to failure

[@flyingt4348]

Nah, just scrum.

[@kittysplode]

this looks like a 30 minute video from a dev experienced in failure...

[@HealthyDev]

I’ve worked on nearly 40 projects. Yes, I’m experienced with failed projects! Successful ones too.

[@kittysplode]

@@HealthyDev focusing on the wrong part of the comment. this is < 3 minutes of information in a 30 minute video.

[@HealthyDev]

​@@kittysplodewe can't please anyone. Other people find value in it, sorry that you didn't *shrug*. Would be cool to see the videos you've done.​

[@kittysplode]

@@HealthyDev wouldn't be enjoyable for either of us. i'll stick to condensing thousands of lines of code by 98.3%

[@awaedin]

Funny how it's never your fault in these stories

[@HealthyDev]

Have you watched any of the videos in the “my software development stories” playlist? If not you probably don’t have a clear picture there. I always talk about areas I could improve. Hopefully that helps.

[@PaulSebastianM]

You know you say "you know" A LOT!?