Change is constant; your journey is ongoing; your journey never stops. These ideas have been recognised for many, many years; these ideas are not new ideas:
“Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river.” – Plato
No two projects are ever the same, even if they’re the same project! Repeating projects (e.g. onboarding new clients) are separated by time, by personnel, by changing external factors … and by client.
Whilst it’s true that no two projects are the ever the same, the risk of failure is reduced if you adopt a standardised and flexible methodology that can be tailored to your current situation – a sort of project delivery toolbox.
Project methodologies are not in short supply, they all follow the same principles and they can all be reduced to little more than mechanisms that encourage you to think before you do. Use the guide to follow the journey but don’t forget to step back and appreciate the ever changing landscape.
Don’t try to constrain the constant flow of changing circumstances, work with them and work through them … restricting the natural flow will lead to stagnation.
Stagnation is not a healthy flowing river, it is an idle and stale pond that will prevent you from realising your full potential.
Download the GuideVision
Your vision is what you see when you close your eyes and look at a future that does not yet exist. If I were to come back in a year’s time and ask you about that vision, would you still have to close your eyes?
Before you can get going, you need to know where you’re going, and you need to know what it’s going to look like when you get there!
Close your eyes … and open your mind.
Approach
Wherever you’re heading and whatever you’re doing, take the time to pause and step back, take the time to consider and then re-consider the path.
Begin with your vision of the future and play out all the possible alternatives – in your mind. Consider the pros and cons and be sure that your path is the right path.
Take the time to consider the team, share your approach, and then share what you can see so that they can see it with you.
Think before you do, and then do it right.
Analyse
Less is more.
Complex solutions are not compulsory, but ironically, they’re much easier.
Spending your time developing complexity is going to confound your ability to deliver your vision, so take the time to step back, remove complex concepts and add value to your approach.
Considered analysis delivers simplicity … think about it.
Design
Designing is so much easier if you know what you’re designing.
If the logic of your approach and your supporting analysis is ill considered, and if you haven’t taken a step back and reviewed your efforts with the proper respect that a review deserves, you run the risk of developing and delivering a product based on a design that doesn’t deliver what you had in mind.
Don’t be fooled. If it doesn’t work on paper, it doesn’t work.
Develop
Development isn’t cheap, and reworking development that hasn’t brought your dreams to life in the way you expected costs a lot of money … and make no mistake that no amount of brainiac developers on the payroll can fix what you haven’t bothered to think about.
This is the hardest lesson to learn and it’s the lesson that many of us learn too late: development is the endgame of an intense exercise in thinking.
Don’t learn the lesson too late because you think it’s someone else’s problem.
Test
The amount that you are going to spend on testing is likely to be inversly proportional to the amount you spent on the pre-development thinking. If you didn’t spend the time reviewing your design before starting your development, you’re going to be spending the time reviewing it now!
Testing is so much more than bug hunting.
Everyone makes mistakes, and mistakes need fixing so it’s vital to have in your employ a team of seasoned bug hunters, working collectively for your product.
Testing is about fixing errors but it’s also about giving yourself the opportunity to improve your product before your customers get to thinking that your product needs improving!
Product
Your product is here and it’s the realisation of your vision, to be delivered to your customers with all the features and benefits and bells and whistles that go with it.
When you began your journey, you could only see where you were heading with your eyes closed. If you opened your eyes, there was nothing to see. Now, when you open your eyes, you can see that you’re vision has become your reality and that you’ve arrived at your destination.
The way that customers tend to adopt products can often be somewhat unpredictable. You need to consider your customers, how they interact with your product, and then optimise the customer experience … for them!