When it crashes

"On any project, the Big Crash usually happens two-thirds of the way through. The phenomenon is so common, across so many fields, that you can almost bank on it. Pencil it into the schedule. It’s gonna happen.

The culprit is usually laziness. Laziness at the start. Somewhere in the initial project conception, we took our eye off the ball. We didn’t think our new drama/high-tech startup/philanthropic venture all the way through. We counted on instinct and passion. We banked on the intercession of the gods. Now our play is two-thirds done, our killer app is due to ship, our clinic in the slums of Zamboanga City is set to open its doors. Now we realize the third act doesn’t work, the software keeps eating itself, and the shantytown gangs have discovered our clinic’s cache of painkillers."