Project tragedies

Journal article, 2022

Serious project failures can be tragedies. Borrowing the term from Aristotle, project management researchers sometimes refer to a peripety when a chaotic project suddenly finds a successful path towards completion. But Aristotle requires tragedies to have a sad ending, and in his Poetics, reversal (peripeteia) is paired with recognition (anagnorisis), which might be closer to the transitory event in chaotic projects. In late antiquity, we find a voyage described as a tragicomedy, when Synesius recounts his experiences of sailing from Alexandria. The narrative of his stormy voyage includes a turning point resembling what modern project researchers have understood as peripety.