First, if you are not familiar, read this.
Then, watch the Netflix documentary (I haven’t seen the other one yet).
Thoughts:
ONE: An excellent example of product vs project.
The Fyre app was built as a product – and by the sounds of it that part was working fairly well – whereas the Fyre Festival SHOULD have been run as a project!
TWO: Aside from the criminal fraud (obviously), this classic bad management trope:
(this is festival consultant Marc Weinstein quoting the response from organisers whenever he raised concerns)
Reminds me of this:
THREE: the (modern?) tendency to try to run projects by ‘crashing through‘ instead of following an actual, you know, plan. Which is also linked to two other tendencies: under-estimating and ignoring reality.
This guy was put in charge of logistics, and moved aside from that role as soon as he brought up actual logistics – such as how they were going to manage toilets and waste.
To sum up:
“You have to think about toilets” is a pretty good shorthand for what project management is all about.
the non-project project 