I have a saying, "Projects always win." It does not matter how you manage them, or how you approach them, the inherent stress and difficulty in bringing a project to production leaves physical after effects with the team; psychologically as a team and physically as individuals.
I recall many years ago doing a project in telecommunications where I was working between eighty and one hundred hours a week for an extended period - the dreaded software 'crunch'. Because it was all billable I billed every hour to the client. My paycheck each fortnight was 2.5 times what it normally was and I thought I was rich; however as soon as it went into production my body gave out and I was sick for the next two weeks. Projects win.
More recently we did a project that had us doing eighteen hour days through the QA period to production; I survived it better than normal due to my fitness regime but I was tired, like a robot, and carrying cold sores at the end of it. For the software team it took two months to shake off the tiredness effects of the project. There is a significant loss of productivity during that period.
The toys always come out at the end of the project and it is a way that we make up for the damage we do to our physical health. I bought my second Corvette the day my energy project went live. I was antsy the whole time during the purchase process as I was waiting for a doom and gloom phone call about it being in production and something going wrong. I can recall the car salesman being confused about my behavior.
My current Corvette I bought at the end of the Gravy Project for the same reasons. That team at the end of the project bought Corvettes (me), Lexus', House', Lotus', etc. The psychological desire to buy a toy or an extravagance of some kind at the end of a project is undeniable. It is how we keep ourselves up for the next project. Otherwise the stress is not worth it.
I recently read Sharon Moalem's Survival of the Sickest. In the back of the book he makes the comment to a question that the field of Psychoneuroimmunoendrocrinology [PNI] has sprung up to study phenomena such as why the body gets sick after a particularly stressful time. Moalem writes:
They [PNI Scientists] realize that from moment to moment every emotion we have is registered by most, if not all, of the cells in our bodies.It is a reductionist view of emotions, but given my empirical experience with software projects, IMO, one that will bear fruit. Modern project management, even when done well such that there is no crunch period, or abject stress on team members (which is possible our last project was done on time and with the standard working week) still leaves physical and psychological residue on the team. It will be interesting to have that kind of effect mapped to immunology and the other physical medical sciences. It might even be able to answer why 'projects always win'. (reply)
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