Project Termination
project-management
Solution
Failure is the best (and sometimes only) way to learn new things, even if the failure is not your fault. There are many different angles by which you can salvage useful information from this:
- Code that is reusable
- New technologies or skills garnered from the project
- Lessons about project management based on how the failure was handled (maybe the project should have been canceled much sooner, before the team bought into it)
- Non-technical ideas that you can reuse in other projects for the company or even in your own endeavors.
I highly recommend doing a postmortem, but don't dwell. Most projects get canned at some point in their cycle and if you let it affect your morale, it becomes a downward spiral from which it's hard to recover. You may become oversensitive to even slight requirements changes.
Problem
I was recently working with a team to develop an online system. We had worked for several months and were making good progress when the project got canned. We all felt strongly that the projects completion was important and that it would have great outcomes on our consumers productivity. After being frustrated for a while I thought I should ask some people with more experience. What is the best way to deal with the frustration of a canned project and move forward so that it doesn't hold future possibilities back?