To Fail or Not to Fail?
I’m torn between the essence of two ideas I find very appealing, but seemingly at odds with one another. The first is based on achieving progress using a “fail fast, fail forward” approach and the second involves achieving excellence by “minimizing mistakes”. The former is more of a philosophy for growth or innovation I suppose. Try new things, learn as quickly as you can, and understand that there is as much (or more) to be learned in what we mess up as there is...
Read More7 Speeds of Fast
I once read that John “Pieface” McKenzie, a Boston Bruin in the Bobby Orr era, described Orr as having “7 speeds of Fast”. I don’t have the actual quote but I recall the context of his comment being that he was skating up the ice one game, thinking he was going pretty fast, when Bobby glided past him, going much faster, but appearing to be barely exerting himself. The world we live in almost always puts a premium on speed. Business wants to bring products to market...
Read MoreEstablishing Ownership of Deliverables
The fundamental elements of value that a project provides to its stakeholders are sometimes known as deliverables. Attempting to articulate a project’s deliverables at the beginning of a project is a good way to define what the project sponsors are expecting to gain upon successful completion of the project. Deliverables can range from the very complex (a large new software system) to the relatively simpler (a high level written assessment by a third party of an existing business...
Read MoreWhen Delays Are More Than Delays
One of things I’ve learned over many projects big and small is that delays in any aspect of a project can have some unanticipated consequences. One of the most common but unintuitive of these consequences is that sometimes a simply delay in one task, or task group, can actually result in changes to the definition of a task or task group that is dependent on the work that is delayed. Why do I suggest this is unintuitive? Consider that project managers typically build plans by identifying...
Read MoreSome Thoughts on Agile
Here’s some insight I have gleaned from delving into Agile over last little while. While these points might seem overly simplistic, they are key concepts from my perspective: Agile is an umbrella term that describes approaches for software development that are quite different from the waterfall approach, which is very linear in concept, that is quite prevalent in many shops Scrum and XP (eXtreme Programming) are two approaches that are considered Agile Some of the folks whose stuff...
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