Projémon: The Dead Weight
The Dead Weight (Pondus mortuus) is a resource-substitute that starves the Project without the Project knowing it is perishing.
Evolution and Taxonomy
The Dead Weight has a troubling evolutionary trail, sharing some traits with other people-type resources but enough traits from other branches to belie a common ancestor. It is almost a yin to the Scope Creep yang - rather than adding end deliverable complexities with no additional resources; the Dead Weight masks a lack of resources to achieve the Project's end deliverable goal. There is also difficulty in distinguishing a Dead Weight from a False Dead Weight (see below).
Biology and Defence
The Dead Weight's survival strategy has more in common with a cuckoo than a resource. Dead Weights take the place of other resources a Project has gathered for creating its end deliverable, but instead of providing resources they consume them with no return. To defend against a Dead Weight, Projects produce an expectation for every stage (also known as stage targets or sprints) with a binary success marker. Continued false markers can reveal a Dead Weight and Projects can amputate and regenerate the resource as required. False Dead Weights initially have these false markers evident, but by working with the clearly defined expectations they can turn this around to become fully contributing resources to a Project.