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It happens in organizations that are more interested in fire fighting then planning.
It happens in organizations that have a self-important c-level who rejects things that he did not come up with.
It happens in organizations that are struggling to react to a market change.
We’re in the green for a 2 year runway. Probably politics
Yeah, it happens. Not for all projects
I've known people who have worked on NDA projects for two YEARS, then have the entire initiative scrapped, and because it was NDA they couldn't even talk about the details on their resumés, portfolios, etc 🙃
Definitely happens sometimes, but always an extremely demoralizing experience when it happens. I just recently had a previously scrapped project be resurrected though, so sometimes that happens too!
Oh no 😭 Yeah, I feel completely useless. I’m trying to figure out what went wrong, how we could have communicated better from the start to not let this drag on for months ever again, but I’m also a total junior in the industry and new to the company and product and was relying on my PM who handed me the project.
Projects get canceled for business reasons:
* There may be shifts in business strategy or sales.
* New technologies or an acquisition make the project redundant or no longer relevant.
* Budget constraints may cause a project to be defunded. So can a leader who has the power to cannibalize the funding for their own pet project.
* Sometimes it's purely political. A someone else posted, a new executive may simply have a preference for a different technology, process, or their own vendor preference.
It's also not uncommon for a project to be sabotaged when a powerful stakeholder has been left out of the loop early on and left to form their own assumptions or expectations. It's dangerous when they swoop in after significant work has been done--hence the legacy Project Manager mantra to deliver small, deliver often.
This situation begs questions about transparency, including identifying all stakeholders and decision-makers early and establishing incremental stakeholder reporting and communication.
I'd recommend talking with your Product Manager about holding a retrospective to try and determine what could/should have been done differently, and what safeguards could be put in place for the next project.
Looks Like I wrote this post. Exactly the same happened to me a copy of months ago. I got so frustrated that I searched for other jobs, and got a new one
Different leadership has different goals and priorities, and yeah that sometimes kicks us in the gut. You could have director x that likes platform y just because their close buddy works there, so all that work, gone
I had it happen to co-workers of mine - a 2-year project was cancelled at the last minute because a different division did not want to do the work to migrate into it and got higher-ups to cancel it.
Engineering has the final say, always
+1 on the importance of Engineer / Design collaboration. Where I am at, our insights are valued since part of the responsibility is meeting business goals.