September 2008 - Posts

• It's only failure if you choose to look at it that way

  What is failure?   Dictionary.com defines failure as: 1. an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; lack of success: His effort ended in failure. The campaign was a failure. 2. nonperformance of something due, required, or expected: a failure to do what one has promised; a failure to appear. Basically, failure is either the absence of success or the state of something that does not meet expectations.  Can a project fail if expectations were not clearly stated at the beginning? Or if its criteria for success were not defined? Success can happen outside of expectations Sometimes the expectations we have at the beginning of the project become irrelevant as the project evolves. For example, a research project where the initial expectation of is to develop a drug to treat a specific condition, but that drug ends up as a better, more effective treatment for another health problem. Can this project be seen as a failure? There is still success, even though the end product does not meet the initial expectations. Success and failure are in the eyes of the beholder Some projects go well. Some projects go badly. At the end of the project, a lot is forgotten, and what is seen is the end result. So even if it was excruciatingly difficult to deliver, the project can still be seen as a success if the end result is seen as positive.       Posted Sep 30 2008, 10:41 AM by Karine with no comments Filed under: project management, failure

• Let us go

  Scott at WebWorkerDaily has a very good point: "Please let my account die gracefully, peacefully and with dignity." I think a lot of us share Scott's problem: We try a new web service or product, we setup a free account, and quickly forget about it...only we can't. Because we keep receiving emails from these services. Even though we haven't logged into those accounts for months, and have never clicked on any link in the email or responded in any way to the call to action, we still receive about an email a week from these services. I classify them as spam, and forget about them. The problem I have with these is that they pollute my email inbox, and they waste my time. AceProject has a free account anyone can create. It is limited to 5 users, 5 projects, 50 tasks and 25MB of file storage. It gives prospective clients a chance to take AceProject on a test run. If they like AceProject, they can upgrade their free account.  If they don't like AceProject, they can forget it. Free AceProject account that are inactive for 30 days are deleted automatically, and we will never contact these people again. While some people may think it's nice to have a very large database of people to spam, I doubt there is any money to be made, long term, from annoying people. Whatever happened to doing the right thing? Posted Sep 24 2008, 08:43 AM by Karine with no comments Filed under: business, customer service

• Patience in an instant world

  Having patience in today's world is waiting more than 5 minutes for your latte at the coffee shop without throwing a tantrum. Seth Godin's article about patience and success is food for thought. Like anything else in life, projects are an investment in time. It doesn't matter how fast someone wants the project to be completed, things take time and, short of a time machine, time itself cannot be sped up. Not every delay problem can be solved by throwing more people at it. If you need 100 boxes moved from room 1 to room 2, having more people moving the boxes will get the job done faster. However, there are only a few tasks that really gain speed from adding people on the team. Writing the documentation for a product, for example, cannot be sped up by adding more people on the team. If you get several writers working on the same document, all you'll get is a patched-up user's manual that looks not quite put together. The cost in quality is not worth the savings in time. At Websystems, when we work on a new version of AceProject, it's ready when it's ready. We avoid delivery dates for AceProject because we prefer to release a product that works well to releasing a product on a schedule. It's harder to be patient towards the end, when all I want is to show off the new shiny version with all the cool features, but in the end it's worth it, because when I do get to show off the new AceProject, it works. Posted Sep 17 2008, 08:38 AM by Karine with no comments

• Easy now or easy later?

  It it better to make the tool easy to use the first time, or everytime afterwards? For the newbies, if the use of the tool is not self-evident from the start, you're making their experience difficult. This will cost sales at first. However, if you design the tool to be incredibly efficient to use once you've figured it out, the people who've pushed through the learning curve will stick with you longer. It all depends if you target mostly one-time buyers, or focus on long-term business relationships.   Posted Sep 10 2008, 08:38 AM by Karine with no comments Filed under: product development

• Intuition laughs in the face of analysis

  Project management is all about data: goals, requirements, resources, tasks, documents, planning, scheduling, budgeting, and then some. No matter how much of that data one can product or study, there is always a time when the decision must be taken with the gut. When we must listen to the voice of intuition. When, even with all the facts against him, a developer can be convinced he can fix the problem within the deadline. Can you trust intuition? Intuition and faith and so much alike. Can we trust somebody's gut feeling, or even our own? Especially when it contradicts the facts? The fact is, if we don't, chances are we will regret it down the line. When someone is absolutely convinced, and can pass this conviction onto the team, they deserve to be given the chance to prove their gut feeling. It's a big risk. But one will never be great by playing it safe. So the question is: would you prefer greatness or safety? Posted Sep 03 2008, 08:37 AM by Karine with no comments Filed under: project management