Interview with Ray Sullivan
Author of Project: Evil
Ray Sullivan is a British author born and raised in north Wales. He completed a 24 year military career in the Royal Air Force before returning to north Wales to work in the public and private sector. Until he retired he was a lecturer in aeronautical engineering when not writing. Ray's writing is impossible to pidgeon-hole - his novels range from sci-fi, to military adventure to comedic. His latest book is Bronze, a murder mystery featuring an explosives ordnance disposal expert cum detective.
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How would you describe Project: Evil to a new reader?
- It's really the only resource you need to start up, manage and complete a major engineering, infrastructure or catering project. If software engineering projects are your bag, it's way over the top.
The book follows the journey by Brian, who has blagged his way into a major league project management role to build an evil secret lair in the eponymous South Seas, despite not having any project management experience.
Each chapter is essentially a project milestone, usually a meeting where a lot is said and nothing is achieved. Difficult enough on normal projects, but when you're working for an acknowledged megalomaniac hell-bent of destroying the human race, the planet or worse then it's really a challenge, especially as you try to keep within Prince 2 guidelines.
Throw in an octogenarian Secret Service agent and loads of henchmen and women running around with flame throwers, you've got a challenge on your hands.
How did Project: Evil come to be?
- I was wandering past the TV one afternoon and caught the end of a James Bond movie, one of the Seventies Dodgy Moore affairs where Bond is running amok with henchmen and women in sh!t coloured pyjamas falling over handrails obviously too low to satisfy the Health and Safety at Work Act. I wondered to myself, as I took in the missile launching facilities and ludicrously vulnerable abort button, how would you go about project managing that installation?
It appears there's a lot to it, from massaging the ego of the project sponsor (if you wish to survive) to preventing the communications director (in this case the dyslexic rapper Doggy Slippy Doo) blurting out that you're a fraud.
To what extent is Project Evil based on your own experiences?
- I spent quite a few years working on Ministry of Defence technical equipment projects and I've project managed a couple of software projects for industry and the public sector, so I've seen how bizarre the world of Project Management can be first hand. I must have sat through hundreds of hours of tedious meetings where very simple decisions are made incredibly hard - I sat through a two hour discussion about the colour of aircraft control rods once, having exempted myself on the grounds I'm colour blind and therefore not best positioned to comment. I'll never get those hours back!
Actually I quite like the project environment, and anyone who has been dragged kicking and screaming into a project meeting will recognise the personalities exploited in Project: Evil. It's a completely tongue in cheek book with many, many references to the James Bond Genre.
Do Ikea really sell flat packed volcanoes?
- Possibly, but I admit I made that bit up rather than trek down to the local outlet to check. I think my internet might have been down that afternoon, too. If they do they probably call it the Sprongstrum range, and provide it in a variety of colours. I'd recommend Rain-forest purple, but please note the comments about my colour sight above before buying one without checking.
Is Project: Evil a replacement for a Prince 2 practitioner course?
- Obviously I would recommend anyone wanting to run a serious project, especially one where the continued existence or otherwise of the planet is a deliverable would be worth taking the Prince 2 practitioner course as well as reading Project: Evil. But if you're pushed for cash, then Project: Evil will give you the most important bits. However, if you are going to sit the Prince 2 course and attend the prerequisite training then maybe you could consider Project: Evil as a suitable case study. For reasons I haven't bottomed out, the book hasn't made the course reading list yet, probably because it was delivered on time, on budget and in scope. Admittedly there wasn't a time scale set, the budget was zero and the scope was written after the book was published. Now you're getting the idea of how to run a successful project!.
Is there going to be a sequel?
- Come on, the point of Project: Evil is to project manage a device to destroy the planet and everyone on it. How could there possibly be a sequel? Of course there is, probably not on time. Or in budget.
