Work­ing with project phases is man­ag­ing expec­ta­tions and being pre­pared. Every­one who’s ever done win­ter sports will be famil­iar with those postal cards dis­play­ing scarcely dressed ladies in bikini pranc­ing the pistes seem­ingly obliv­i­ous to the cold. I can imag­ine there are peo­ple on this planet who’re able to with­stand freez­ing tem­per­a­tures with noth­ing more than the clothes our Cre­ator gave them, but I’m not one of them. When I want to go snow­board­ing I start of with a spe­cific set of cloth­ing because I know what to expect up front when head­ing above two clicks on the slopes in the south of France.

Work­ing With Project Phases = Man­ag­ing Expec­ta­tions + Being Prepared

The same goes for soft­ware projects. With each and every project I know what to expect because soft­ware projects behave accord­ing to rec­og­niz­able pat­terns which we call project phases. The sun may shine or it may snow all week, but I never bring my flip-flops, at least not when I want to go ski.

“There’s a word for peo­ple who will bring flip-flops to the Alps want­ing to ski. the same word applies to peo­ple start­ing a project with­out any sense what to do or any knowl­edge about project phases.”

We may laugh, but sadly this is the case far more than we may like to.

• How many more times do we have to be part of a project, that’s already started when nobody actu­ally knows where it’s headed?
• How many more times do we argue about minor things while the house is burn­ing down?
• How many more times will dead­lines shift two, three, ten times because of the fail­ure to take con­sis­tent, con­struc­tive and effec­tive action?
• How much money and human cap­i­tal have to be wasted before some­body stands up say­ing: “We don’t have to be sheep, for God’s sake!”

Every soft­ware project for me is a chance to learn about human nature, because every time I see peo­ple maneu­ver­ing them­selves into tight spots which is solely their respon­si­bil­ity. I’ve actu­ally future paced peo­ple to a moment where they will see my grin­ning face loom­ing in front of them dur­ing their sleep dodg­ing and weav­ing say­ing: “I told you so, I told you so!”.

Work­ing With Project Phases = Being a Professional

To be hon­est, I’ve been manoeu­vred in more than one tight spot myself, because of noth­ing more than the deci­sions I made. It’s just that at one point in time I stopped bang­ing my head against the wall and started pay­ing atten­tion. What I found out was the fact that there’s a hid­den generic power in pat­terns if I was hum­ble enough to lis­ten. If you start notic­ing these pat­terns and start apply­ing them your­self, inte­grat­ing them into your skill set, ever adding things that work, leav­ing things behind that don’t, chaf­ing, sculpt­ing, you will be king. Project phases have all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of pat­terns and will make you a fron­trun­ner, leav­ing every­body in the dust.

“It takes CHARACTER to start apply­ing project phases in your own soft­ware projects. Deal­ing with the truth often asks that from peo­ple.”

So if you think your project is so spe­cial, so unique that generic project phases are wasted on you, you’re WRONG unless you work for NASA on a project putting the first man on Mars. Chances are, you’re not, so project phases apply as much to you and your project as to any­one else’s.

Related posts:

1. Soft­ware Project Trait #1: Hall Stand
2. Func­tional Spec­i­fi­ca­tions: the Soft­ware Project Ecosystem
3. Soft­ware Project Foun­da­tion Necessities