Something told me the project was doomed to fail. I think it was because it had been designed entirely in French! In 2001, before CRM had moved into the domain of the mid-market, I had been IT Manager at a small technology company. I had just taken the position after being in another industry for more than a decade, and part of the reason I jumped ship was to pursue new challenges. Within a week of being hired, Something told me the project was doomed to fail. I think it was because it had been designed entirely in French!In 2001, before CRM had moved into the domain of the mid-market, I had been IT Manager at a small technology company. I had just taken the position after being in another industry for more than a decade, and part of the reason I jumped ship was to pursue new challenges. Within a week of being hired, the CEO demanded that we get a CRM software solution online within 120 days. I was to work within an initial budget of $250K, develop resources lists, process maps, and have them available within 30 days for approval. (Remember, I said I wanted a challenge). I wasn’t aware that the CEO was negotiating a buyout from a larger vendor, and wanted to “dog and pony” the technology at a sales conference four months later. Needless to say, the project came off without many hitches. With support from above, all users, managers and staff were brought into the design process, and by the time of the conference, the system had been online and working as per spec for approximately two weeks. I mention this project because the company that was going to buy us was a Lotus Notes shop, and after my CEO’s presentation, their suits decided they needed a similar system…and they were determined to build it from within using Notes. I was a fan of the idea of Notes but never of its implementation, and I was brought in as a technical consultant to the parent company’s SFA/CRM team. I was introduced to my counterpart at the parent, and we spent approximately a day discussing how I had managed to do what they were planning on doing so quickly. This manager, William, had a lead programmer who just so happened to be his wife. After three days of endless meetings listening to them and the management team extol the virtues of the project, I was shown their “top secret” demo: It was pure Alpha version stuff, mostly skeletal forms with little functionality, but that’s not what told me this was doomed to fail. What tipped me off was that the demo had been designed completely in French! When I mentioned this aspect, and explained it would be difficult to evaluate a project written in a foreign language, you could have heard a pin drop. Apparently, everyone in management spoke French and couldn’t be bothered that any of their test users would not also. Needless to say, I didn’t want to learn French and I certainly wasn’t going to enable a delusional implementation team. I left shortly after the buyout was completed. Some of my old friends tell me they spent almost $750,000 on the programming and design and wound up scrapping the project almost 12 months later. Primary reason: The testers “ne parlent pas français.” It just goes to show that even something as assumable as a common language cannot be taken for granted when pet projects, office politics, and nepotism are involved. Data Management