Comments on: Is your project a failure? Part II

By: The one thing you cannot do |

The one thing you cannot do | — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:59:00 +0000

[...] it or not, this is my angry face. I touched upon this in an earlier post. But I thought it was worth repeating from a team [...]

By: Thomas Lindqvist

Thomas Lindqvist — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:06:54 +0000

I couldn't agree more with your post. Often, designers and coders are very much savvy to the possibilities and problems of web based projects. Sometimes even more so than the suit and tie running the business side of things. What the designer and coders lack is the opportunity and the language to express their opinions. We can give them that opportunity. And the language, well, that's just corporate / business / marketing mumbo-jumbo anyways. I think a good start could be to aim for a better definition of delivered value – usable software is a good start. Moneymaking – or customer problem solving software is even better. End game goals. We surely need our experts in each domain, but allowing for everyone's input in the project with egards to the end game, and avoiding the “creative genius” or “back end genius nerd” mentality, could help create a collective ownership of the whole project delivery. I'd like to instill systems thinking across the line. Everyone should realize that even a optimized sub-process is crippled if not placed in the context of the whole system. Holistic thinking and all that. Huge subject – lot's to say. So little time.

And thank you for your kind comments with regards to my blog.

By: forsandree

forsandree — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:10:39 +0000

Btw, I had missed this blog! You're now in my rss reader, thanks for great posts!

By: forsandree

forsandree — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:06:08 +0000

I agree, succeeding requires a setup where everyone has at least a basic understanding of the business objectives. This also requires having everyone understand more about what the others do. You cant solve the business needs by just hacking code, creating the coolest design or the best text - you need to balance all three.

I'm very interested in how to bridge this gap. It's hard (and probably not a good idea in the first place) to try to change peoples' interests. Yet, somehow you have to force people to work together.

I think one part of this is to reward solutions where all perspectives have worked together. Stop saying to the programmer that they've done a great job in the coding - always talk about a great job in the overall context. Some thoughts on this here http://definitionofdone.blogspot.com/2009/10/be...