As AceProject grows, it takes longer to put out a new version. There is more to test, the documentation takes longer to be finished, and debugging is a growing monster.

Typical of waterfall development methods.

Daniel, our president, was tired of this. He wanted us to be able to release versions faster, more efficiently. Instead of having a release-based development cycle, we’ll have a feature-base development cycle. This means when a feature is out of the initial development phase, it will go straight to testing, documentation and debugging. It’s going to be easier to test just the one feature and its implications. It’s going to be faster to write documentation for just one feature at a time. It’s going to be a lot easier for developers to debug the feature they just developed, because it’s fresh in their minds.

On another level, it’s going to create one big team of the developers, testers and writer. Instead of the technical writer waiting for development to be done to start working, he will be working with them, as they develop […]

This fall is exceptionnally lively, politically speaking. There are elections both in the USA and in Canada. While in the USA there are only two political parties, in Canada there are five major political parties:

• The conservatives
• The liberals
• The socialists
• The greens
• A regional party that represents the interests of the Quebec province

That means 5 political programs. Five documents any elector should read before making a decision. That’s a lot of information!

This situation is an excellent example people making decisions based on their intuition instead of facts. Of course, there are some facts involved – the facts we read or hear about in the news or on political advertisements. But on voting day, it will all come down to guts: how we feel about the candidates, about the parties, and who we trust most.

The truth is, we could make a complicated comparative chart of all five parties’ programs and study it carefully, in the voting booth we would still choose with our gut.

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?