Development projects: complex endeavors, that not only re- quire the coordination of a multitude of stakeholders, but the continued support by key decision-makers. Research gap: present project management frameworks tend to disregard the role end-users can play in the project implemen- tation phases, relegating their impact on project success primari- ly to the adoption of project outputs. Research question: Cape Verde, an insular African nation located in the Atlantic Ocean, as a climatic pattern off prolonged dry seasons with very brief monsoons. Water scarcity is a major limiting factor of food production, and dramatically conditions food security. In 2010 the government launched a ten year plan, calling for the construction of irrigation reservoirs. One these reservoirs was the Figueira Gorda reservoir, which although completed in 2014 the irrigation network was never built. Project success can be a contentious issue (Ika & Pinto, 2022), however, regardless of the specific success criteria, the absence of an irrigation network renders the Figueira Gorda a failure. Despite the project's top-down abandonment, local small farm- ers, the end-users, creatively utilized the water made availa- ble by the reservoir within their water-constrained environment to cultivate irrigated crops. We applied an abductive research design (Sætre & Van De Ven, 2024), starting with an exploratory case study analysis (Yin, 1994), focusing on the Figueira Gorda due to its extreme nature (Flyvbjerg, 2006), characterized by a distinct top-down abandon- ment of the project, juxtaposed with evident end-user-driven pro- ject success. Utilizing an inductive qualitative approach, we triangulated findings from various data sources (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018), in- cluding farmer surveys, subject-matter expert interviews, pub- licly available news, and satellite imagery. We sincerely thank Luís Brites Pereira of Nova School of Business and Economics, Miguel Lino Ferreira of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town, and Arlindo Fortes of the Universidade de Cabo Verde for their support and guidance throughout this project. Their insights and inputs have been invaluable in shaping this research. Bricolage, defined as 'making do by applying resources at hand to new problems' (Busch & Barkema, 2021, p. 741), encap- sulates the actions of small-farmers at the Figueira Gorda reser- voir. Following the project's construction, and despite its failure, the small-farmers became bricoleurs, ingeniously utilizing the limiting resource just made available. Our study demonstrates that when failed or abandoned pro- jects offers access to the limiting resource, end-users can de- velop a bricolage repertoire to extract value from it, fostering a virtuous cycle that leads to project success. Busch, C., & Barkema, H. (2021). From necessity to opportunity: Scaling bricolage across resource- constrained environments. Strategic Management Journal, 42(4), 741-773. doi.org/10.1002/ smj.3237 Denzin, N., & Lincoln Y. (2018). The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research (6th ed.). SAGE Publica- tions, Inc Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219-245. doi.org/10.1177/1077800405284363 Ika, L. A., & Pinto, J. K. (2022). The “re-meaning” of project success: Updating and recalibrating for a modern project management. International Journal of Project Management, 40(7), 835-848. doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2022.08.001 Sætre, A. S., & Van De Ven, A. (2024). Abductive Theorizing Is More Than Idea Generation: Disciplined Imagination and a Prepared Mind. Academy of Management Review, amr.2021.0317. https:// doi.org/10.5465/amr.2021.0317 Yin, R. K. (1994). Discovering the future of the case study. Method in evaluation research. American Journal of Evaluation, 15(3), 283-290. https://doi.org/10.1177/109821409401500309 Cape VerdeSantiago IslandFigueira Gorda reservoirPhD thesis tutor:María Concepción López-Fernández Univ