Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes, projects and the people working on them lose their way.

This is an expression I heard many times over the years.

They’ve lost their way.

I didn’t understand the expression. I suppose it was one of those grand mistakes that I never assumed people would make, but time showed me over and again that people do indeed make this mistake.

Losing Your Way: A project begins with a clear goal. Some people call this a Mission Statement. Time marches on and several months or years later, no one on the project can tell you the goal of the project. They have lost their way.

Where is Here?: Becoming lost is an easy thing to do. A project begins with a goal, and the goal leads to a set of requirements. People work earnestly to meet those requirements. One day they awaken to murky if any requirements. They are unsure where they are; they are lost.

How Did We Get Here?: Things happen in a project. Someone discovers that they don’t have the technology to meet a requirement, a.k.a., this is impossible. Then someone else walks in the door with a couple of new requirements.

We just didn’t think of these at first, but now we are enlightened and this is the way to go (until someone else enlightens us next month and we have yet another new way to go).

Someone forgets to erase the old requirements. Part of the team is working the old requirements while part is working the new requirements while part is talk to new enlighten-ers about the new light and all that.

And then to make matters worse, (or is it to make matters better? Sometimes I confuse the two.) Someone walks in the door and asks us to describe what we are doing. They use the words, “Where are you going?”

Everyone in the room looks at everyone else, starts pointing fingers, and mumbles something or other under their breathe but loud enough so that the room fills with incoherency.

They lost their way.

How to Stay Found: This is pretty easy, but it isn’t as much fun as becoming lost. Here it is:

Don’t change any requirements unless you follow a strict, agreed-upon method of changing requirements.

Aargh. As I wrote above, that isn’t much fun. Please note, the method does not prohibit change. It merely requires working to something we all agreed upon earlier when we knew our way.