November 28
Schrödinger’s project
As much as I would love to, no, this is not related to physics. Not more than a metaphor could be.
Last week I told one of my coworkers that the project we just launched felt like a failure, but in fact it was a success. That’s what I call the Schrödinger’s project, similar to Schrödinger’s cat, which is dead and alive at the same time. How did that happen? How can a project fail and succeed?
Adversity ≠ dead cat
Our project faced so many different adversities that all of us would have expected it to be shutdown without it arriving to that sweet point where thing are really making progress. However, that did not happen. The project went on, we met our dates and we overcame such obstacles. Of course, this happens all the time. Every project, make it a software project or not, faces unexpected adversities. Unplanned things. Accidents. Honest errors. Bad luck. There are even methodologies that take the unconsidered in consideration, as contradictory as that sounds.
Where’s a will there is a way
Through the desert and up the hill.
Accelerate: we will prevail,
’cause never are we standing still.
– Quid Pro Quo, The Retrosic
If we all gave up on the first adversity we found, nothing would be completed. When is the time to stop? I would say second obstacle is not the it, either. Third? Fourth? Tenth?
We never stopped.
Also, having a lot of adversities is not indicator you would desire. That means that you were really poor in your risk management, or the gods are mad at you. One way or another, you should be really careful. This is a clear indicator the planning phase should dedicate more time to all those items that came up from nowhere.
But we did it!
Finishing ≠ alive cat
At what cost do you go on? Let’s leave aside for a moment the budget, the human hours involved, the efforts, stress and another factors. Measuring only the final product, is is really what we want it to be? Overcoming adversity can make your final product weaker, because it ended up travelling unexplored roads. Of course, what does not kill you makes you stronger, so it could be both beneficial or prejudicial. This fine line has to be really watched closely, because once you cross it to the wrong side, every single step is making things worse. In doing that is when the extra hours, stress and team work help. I cannot emphasize the importance of this enough: if the common sense and good criteria are not used well, your perseverance may be hurting the product more than helping it. Realizing is so hard when everyone has put so much of themselves into it, but results are merciless in that matter.
Is the cat dead?
No.
As much as I may have scared you already, it does not mean that there is now way out, or no good outcome. There is, in fact, and it is much more gratifying than normal projects, and even better: the experience and lessons learned from this kind of experiences is so reach that it will pay off its efforts really soon, in so many different projects, at so many different levels.
To continue with my original story, I could also tell this person that in such situations I could really find out how is the team that surrounds me. Who gave me freeway and blind trust to do whatever I needed to do to move the project forward. Who I may give blind trust to go on with their work. Who considered their work a passion and who of them were the 5:01 workers. Which processes actually made the work heavier, which practices made the tasks easier.
This is the kind of situations were this product may have been just what was intended and made it stumbling riskily onto obstacles. But the projects after this one are going to be so well prepared, that adversities won’t stand a chance.
Do not learn from failures only. Learn from successes as well.
