Project management is the art of the possible becoming the probable. Project management is what happens when someone gets a budget behind a dream. Project management is an adventure with quite a boring plan.

After the marketing boys have finished grandstanding the proposition; after the legal contracts have signed us up to an almost facetious collection of pie-in-the-sky clauses and deliverables (all due tomorrow) and after the executive team have given us the pep-talk, the project management team huddle in a small, windowless room with a flickering strip light and some plastic beakers of congealing machine tea.

The programme director stands up, a prematurely-aged lopsided white Zimbabwean with a taste for blood and golf. He leans over and focusses the projector, sharpening the time-worn slide templates for another outing.

"Well, boys and girls, here we go again. Or at least, here I go again..." Avoiding eye contact and infrequently picking the blisters off his hands, he reads out the impossible to the incredulous. The game is on. The cheque has been written. The executive are in the wine bars and the heat, although imperceptible except to the oldest of hands, has just been lit under our pan. Here we go again, indeed.