This is disgusting.

Here you will find a report posted today by the US Government to the web and which we bring you in the spirit of helping to understand the ‘monitor and control‘ part of project management, or really, business in general.  In fact, the people in this report behave as if they were Charlie Sheen’s character (or perhaps his brother or nephew) on the US television program Two and a Half Men.  And thus the post’s title.

The MMS, (Minerals Management Service) is the US Federal oversight agency responsible for controlling the oil industry.  They are the ones who ‘bless’ the drilling platforms in the Gulf, for example.

It’s clear from this report (you only need to read the cover letter to get this) that governance was not properly in place.

Rather than laboring over all of the things that we need to learn from this, I would just suggest that you have a look and realize that in your projects (and in life) you must know that measurements are polluted (excuse the pun) if the people in charge of measuring are under the influence of those that they measure.  This is expressed in PMI’s Code of Conduct and Professional Responsibility.

Is it any wonder that we have the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, and even (although small in comparison) today’s other spill in Alaska?

We all can do better than this.