Part One: Why Programmes Fail

Most engineering programmes that fail do not fail suddenly. They fail slowly, visibly, and predictably — in ways that the people closest to the work could see coming and frequently said so.

The chapters in this section describe how that happens. Not in the abstract, but through the specific structural mechanisms that convert accurate information into ignored information, honest estimates into compressed commitments, and avoidable failures into repeated ones.

Part One does not offer solutions. That is Part Two’s job. What Part One offers is an honest account of the cause — precise enough that the framework which follows can be understood as a structural response rather than a collection of best practices.

Read Part One with your last difficult programme in mind. If the patterns described here feel familiar, they are. They are not the result of bad people or insufficient process. They are the result of systems designed — usually without anyone noticing — to produce exactly the outcomes they produce.

That is the starting point. Systems that produce predictable failures can be redesigned. The redesign is what this book is for.