People mistakes
- Undermined motivation — long death-march hours, public criticism, unrealistic targets.
- Weak personnel — hiring whoever's available rather than waiting for the right fit.
- Uncontrolled problem employees — tolerating individuals who disrupt the team without consequence.
- Heroics — relying on individual heroics instead of fixing the system that requires them.
Process mistakes
- Overly optimistic schedules — committing to dates the team has no realistic chance of hitting.
- Insufficient risk management — no register, or a register that's never updated.
- Wishful thinking — the "we'll just work harder" non-plan.
Product mistakes
- Requirements gold plating — adding requirements just because they're cool.
- Feature creep — agreeing to scope additions without trade-offs.
- Developer gold plating — engineers building elegant systems beyond what the requirements need.
Technology mistakes
- Silver-bullet syndrome — believing a new tool / framework / methodology will solve the project's problems.
- Switching tools mid-project — paying the cost of relearning at the worst possible time.
- Overestimating savings from new tools — net productivity often drops in the first project that introduces a new tool.