This was a thread over at LinkedIn, published in CIO. My submission is number three.

Here’s a few of my favorites:

• When you see the project budget, you realize that over half of it was spent on a Web designer to create a Photoshop mock-up of the home page-with no regard to whether that design is feasible. Or with any attention to the thousands of pages of content that will exist underneath that home page.
• It is a big project and is named Project Iceberg. Or it’s the third time the company is trying to pull this off, and the project is code-named “Phoenix.” Somehow, you don’t believe this one can spring from the ashes.
• The manager of your mission-critical project (handling 80 percent of the company’s revenue) has three months exposure to the technology of choice, and is training four brand-new developers at once. The manager is given a three-month project deadline.
• Management decides to spend a million dollars on a $20,000 project. Then the managers start agreeing with computer company salespeople that the $1 million in software requires $2 million of hardware. Meanwhile, a secretary purchases an off-the-shelf PC and a shrink wrapped CD containing some new office automation packages. She implements the project during her lunch break. (Arguably, we should count this one as a success.)