Success is relative.
I have found out that the success of a project is relative to expectations. Some might say that success can be measured in money. This is also true for long term measurements... For short term money is a bad unit for measuring success. Some sales people think that money is the way to create success, which leads to over selling instead of thinking long term success.
I have always thought that sales is the tool, not the goal.. The goal is to deliver something our customers like and would like to have more of. Or put in another way: deliver what the customer expects. The only way to be able to do this is by knowing the customers expectation, and at an early stage adjust them if we can't deliver what they expect.
Success is indeed relative. Some pholosphical notes on my behalf:
ReplyDeleteShort term success is often defined by some written down, detailed-locked-in-time todo list of task to complete. Long term on the other hand, is weather what was doen actually solved the problem that the system owner initially had and not just delivered the short term specified task.
I guess you could split it up in a problem solving strategy and a projekt risk minimizing strategy and they are not internally fully compatible, as you often make spinoff short-term task if you want to correct the long term usefullness and by this deviating form the plan and increase risk of failure towards contractual obligations .. (roughly speaking).
Its a funny topic regardless, on the huminam communication level you can lower the bar below what you expected yourself and customer will see a success when you deliver just 80% of that and on other other hand, if you make the impression that customer will get a flying mercedes, they chance of failure in view of system owners will be greatly imcreased ..
Enough :)