Via Günter Obiltschnig's Weblog: Steve McConnell lists 36 ineffective development practices in his classic book "Rapid Development" (I certainly got a copy of "Rapid Development" on my bookshelf, just like "Code Complete" and "Software Project Survival Guide")
People-Related Mistakes
#1: Undermined motivation
#2: Weak personnel
#3: Uncontrolled problem employees
#4: Heroics
#5: Adding people to a late project
#6: Noisy, crowded offices
#7: Friction between developers and customers
#8: Unrealistic expectations
#9: Lack of effective project sponsorship
#10: Lack of stakeholder buy-in
#11: Lack of user input
#12: Politics placed over substance
#13: Wishful thinking
Process-Related Mistakes
#14: Overly optimistic schedules
#15: Insufficient risk management
#16: Contractor failure
#17: Insufficient planning
#18: Abandonment of planning under pressure
#19: Wasted time during the fuzzy front end
#20: Shortchanged upstream activities
#21: Inadequate design
#22: Shortchanged quality assurance
#23: Insufficient management controls
#24: Premature or too frequent convergence
#25: Omitting necessary tasks from estimates
#26: Planning to catch up later
#27: Code-like-hell programming
Product-Related Mistakes
#28: Requirements gold-plating
#29: Feature creep
#30: Developer gold-plating
#31: Push me, pull me negotiation
#32: Research-oriented development
Technology-Related Mistakes
#33: Silver-bullet syndrome
#34: Overestimated savings from new tools or methods
#35: Switching tools in the middle of a project
#36: Lack of automated source-code control
