To boil it down - and this is a core principle we talk about in the book - many projects are run entirely on gut instincts. But the specific problems that plague software projects are really resistant to management by gut instincts! If you manage a project with your gut, and only make decisions based on your intuition, you'll keep running into the same problems. And those are the ones we talk about in the book.

Jenny and I have been talking for years about what makes projects fail, and how to change the way we build software so that our projects succeed. When we were working together, we'd spend hours trying to figure out the root causes of our problems. And then, after we moved on to different organizations, we saw the same exact problems over and over again! We talked to a lot of people, and read a lot about project management techniques and practices. We expected to just fix our own problems, but discovered that everyone seems to suffer from the same ones. Something had to be done about this, and that was the inspiration for the book.

They feel like it's not possible to succeed, like these traps are so common because it's impossible to avoid them.

As temperature increases, leakage increases exponentially. TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co] projects that leakage consumes about 50% of the total power. We've asked our customers implementing designs on 90-nm silicon, and they are seeing that leakage consumes 25 to 40% of power. In moving to 65 nm, we expect 50 to 70% of total power will be lost through leakage.

These projects demonstrate that we can efficiently reduce emissions while at the same time increasing the producing life and ultimate recovery of conventional oil reserves.

Ultimately, no matter how many projects you considered, you can't please everyone.