IN THIS LESSON

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THIS CHAPTER

As most of us who have worked in tech for a certain period of time, the concept of running projects based on scope, time and budget as the primary measure for success has been the baseline for most of our work.

When we started our IT career, the first training we received was Project Management Methodology plus the documents you have to deliver to get your software project started. Ultimately, before the vendor of choice has written the first line of code, a magnitude of non-value adding “deliverables” like specifications, project charters, powerpoints etc. have been created to make sure it is clear what needs to be delivered by the teams. Despite our best effort, specifications were incomplete or vague, budget and time forecasts a good guess rather than profound work. After these extensive periods of scope definition, usually on the back of the project timeline, the remainder of the project was used to avoid changes in the initial plan. A vicious circle which usually leaves out the most important component: the user and his/her problem you are trying to solve.

These project-based organizations are at best feature factories that usually do not deliver high added value for customers, users and their own organization are geared towards the wrong success metrics. In this chapter, we explain what we believe to be real success metrics and what needs to be done to anchor them in the organization.

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