What is failure?

Dictionary.com defines failure as:

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 […]

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.

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?

Regular status meetings are boring: everyone
goes around the table and rehashes what they did in the last week or month. No
one really cares. If the project dates are slipping, the team wants the meeting
to be over with so they can get back to doing something useful.

But status meetings can be fun!

Yes, I know, it's a strange concept. But I've
seen it happen. I was doing documentation on a software development team. The
team was implementing agile development practices, and they were planning to do
a release every month. This meant a big meeting with marketing, sales, the
whole development team.

It was important for the project lead to
include the whole company in that project. She felt that it would bring the two
worlds of development and marketing/sales together, that it would help people
understand the other side.

Since everyone had things to do in the
project, I suggested that we make something visual, like a board, to monitor
out progress. The rest of the team thought I was crazy, they humored me. So I
built this huge board and pasted a giant photograph on […]