There's nothing worse than a project where you end up being the de facto project manager simply and only because nobody else will step up. Even when it's part of their job to do so. The strong temptation is to just say "screw it, let the damn thing flounder" but of course that's not an option. That's not what your work ethic is all about. That's just not what you do.

I keep telling myself to just take pride in the fact that you dragged another one over the finish line, even if you did other people's jobs for them along the way. But those people get plenty of the credit that they don't deserve, over and over again. They don't get fired or laid off. They get promoted. How many times do you have to just take one for the team before it becomes tedious and boring?

This blog is a place where I will try to convey a sense of what's happening in my little corner of the web product development and management universe. For USA TODAY, I manage the process of defining, building, deploying and supporting products on our website, specifically as it relates to social networking and interactions with our readers. In that role, I constantly evaluate and re-evalute options, "best practices," input from editors and reporters, input from readers and changing priorities in order to try to produce the best features possible.

Frequently, the pace at which change occurs in the news business, combined with changing priorities, layoffs, furloughs and other unavoidable interference, prevents us from doing many of the cool things that we dream up. When this happens it tends to cause lots of pain, but we suck it up and move on. Part of my job is to anticipate those changes and change direction before they get here.

I hope that this blog will pick up a few readers here and there, but these thoughts need elbow room either way, so I'm going to write them down.