How do you know when a project is screwed?

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/how_do_you_know_when_a_project_is_screwed.htm]

At the MSDN DevCon last month in Chicago, one of the groups in the community center had a very good discussion going - "How do you know when a project is screwed?"

 

A lot of good ideas floated around:

• There is no test code

• All code just has  "catch (Exception ex)" everywhere

• There is no source control - really some projects still just make zip file backups, not even using the free SVN.

• Reinventing basic framework methods

• Lack of team innovation

I think that team chemistry and discipline is also a very good indicator of project success. A team that hates each other will likely fail, even if they're all individual stars. So, I think another good indicator of failure is bad team chemistry.

 

This sort of thing is very-opened ended., I'm assuming that anyone who's been around long enough has seen a dying project, and there are a slew of different reasons.