Vesuvius Erupts

"Bullbleep!" exclaimed Roscoe. "You listen here, sonny. No one on that project lost a limb between the time they made the commitment and the date on which they didn't deliver. 'Extenuating circumstances' my bleeping bleep!"

Well, I had obviously hit a nerve, and I shuddered to think about the effects on Roscoe's team. For, if I was surprised at his reaction as an outside observer, I could only imagine their response to what must have been a world-class butt-kicking on the expected delivery day. As we all know, Roscoe is not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to letting folks know how they've performed.

"Now understand, I gave them lots of rope," Roscoe continued. "They made up the estimates, and I applied my square root rule.^[2] And they still came up empty. First dry hole^[3] I've had in a long time.

^[2] See Chapter 11, "Scheduling."

^[3] In oil-well drilling parlance, a dry hole is a well that never produces any oil. It represents zero ROI, because you have no return, often on a substantial investment. Punching holes in Mother Earth is not cheap.

"I suspected they were in trouble along the way. I tried to dig in and figure out what was going on. But they kept pushing me away, saying I wouldn't understand the technical issues and that everything would be fine anyway. It's my own damn fault for going along. I won't make that mistake again."

Roscoe seemed to grudgingly admit he had been too hands-off in managing this project. I guessed he had not engaged fully enough, as he normally would, because he trusted his people. It would appear that at least in this case, his trust had been misplaced.

Well, I wondered out loud, what exactly did he expect anyway? Perfection?