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28. Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail 247one of the options was to close the project. However, the steering committee electedto work around the dependency, and further costs (not to the project) were incurredby one of the parties. This decision led to conflict, as an opinion existed that these costsshould have been shared across the rural and metropolitan sites. I was not involved atthe time, but I have the feeling that this was a difficult time for the project. There wasa desperate desire for the project to survive, and as a result of the above investment,the party concerned wanted an early deliverable from the project.I believe that this event was likely where the conflict started, and it continued upuntil the actual implementation. There always seemed to be a “them-vs.-us” attitudeacross the steering committee, between those representing the rural and the metropolitansites. This attitude and suspicion continued throughout the project and mademy job really difficult. I had to be careful not appear to be favoring one group overthe other.Stakeholders and PersonalitiesThis project had many masters—the health department, the chief executive officers(CEOs) from the rural sites represented on the steering committee, and the metropolitanrepresentatives.Committee membersUnfortunately, the meetings held over the previous 12 months had focused on failedtechnical issues. The committee members did not have enough real knowledge abouttechnical matters to understand the decisions; they were “guided” not by the projectmanager but by one or two members who appeared to have an understanding of thetechnical issues and tended to dominate the meetings. When I joined the project, thiscontinued to happen, but as I gained more knowledge, I was in a position to challengesome comments and make recommendations. I was not always successful in getting therecommendations through either, as once again these personalities dominated themeetings.The meetings became an attempt to keep one member happy with any decisionsmade rather than have equal representation and voting on decision making. He was abully and was not “managed” by other members or the committee chair. Unfortunately,the committee chair was not strong enough to run a good meeting. She also had aknowledge deficit related to technical matters and did not request further informationfor the members or try to become better informed. The focus was always on thetechnical; the clinical protocols and policies were tabled without question and signed.Because of the 12-month slippage, the health department was greatly concernedabout the viability of the project. Were they ever going to see some deliverables fromthe investment they had made? The conflict became worse as more stakeholdersbecame involved in different expectations of what the project could deliver.AssumptionsI made assumptions that there would be clear project documentation, that a detailedproject plan would exist, and that I would “just pick up” and continue on with theproject management process. In retrospect, it seems that politics and conflict dominated