The Watermelon Project

A CIO of an international energy company. A multi-hundred-million SAP ERP. Every progress report showing green.

Four years behind schedule.

He looked me straight in the eyes and asked: “Do you realize what you’re doing?”

What I was doing was telling the truth.

In digital project management, they call it a Watermelon Project: green outside, red inside. The reporting says everything is fine. Underneath, it’s chaos.

The root cause is neither technical nor methodological. It’s fear. Fear of losing control. Fear of exposing a weakness. Fear of telling the truth to the hierarchy.

What kills projects is the lie organized by fear.