• Think Small

  Filed under Shift Perspective
  Dec 20

  Audio:  Think Small [Time - 5:55, File Size - 5.5 MB]

  “Conventional wisdom says that to beat your competitors you need to one-up them. If they have four features, you need five (or 15, or 25). If they’re spending x, you need to spend xx. If they have 20, you need 30. This sort of one-upping Cold War mentality is a dead-end… expensive, defensive, and paranoid… So what to do then? The answer is less. … [and] less means:

  • Less features
  • Less options/preferences
  • Less people and corporate structure
  • Less meetings and abstractions
  • Less promises”

  – from Getting Real: the Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application, by web-based application builder, 37signals.

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  So… does your project really need to be that big and complicated? Are you sure it couldn’t be tighter, smaller, and a lot more fun?

  Greer’s Challenges…

  Reflections

  Reflect on these questions:

  • Is our project unnecessarily large or even bloated? (See the bullets in the quote above.)
  • What would your project dream team (or dream work process or dream set of deliverables) consist of? How might it be smaller?

  Team Challenges

  Ask your team:

  • What project deliverables or components of your deliverables could we live without?
  • What deliverables might we classify as vanities or “bells and whistles” that no one really wants or needs?
  • Are there steps in our work process that seem silly or redundant … that don’t add value?
  • Are there people we’ve included on the project team or in the project review process who simply don’t add value?
  • How can we get “just enough” deliverables to do a great job and still have fun creating them?

  Project Manager Challenges

  Work with your team to:

  • Find small “chunks” of deliverables or prototypes that could be created more quickly and easily than the full-blown finished deliverables.
  • Build these small chunks, then test them.
  • Consider the possibility that the full-blown finished deliverables may not be needed after all.
  • Find ways to do “just enough” to be inspired, yet maintain quality!

  Learn More…

  • Go to 37signals website and get the free online book, Getting Real: the Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application

  Tagged as: deliverables, project estimating, project scope, project size, scope, scope creep, software development
  
  1 Comment

One Response to “Think Small”

1. 

   Noah Martin said on July 4th, 2010 at 9:59 am

   Team building is really necessary for a very successful implementation of business plans.”~’

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