Translate Vision to Action

There’s an old joke — a camel is a horse designed by committee. Most projects are camels. Unfortunately, they’re expensive camels. The costs are not only financial but political. When executives expect to see a horse and development delivers the camel, reactions can range all the way from panic to wild panic.

Put First Things First

There’s a sequence to the documentation that ensures success. Whether you write three pages or three hundred, you need to follow the sequence or risk failure. Getting these documents correct requires discipline. If you’ve developed a project, you’ve likely used some version of the following:

• Objectives
• Requirements
• Specifications

However, most companies skip or combine the sequence. Many drift back and forth between detail and vision. This damages the product because you miss important steps and omit vital assumptions.

Following the sequence above lets you resolve conflicts early in the project, breaks the development into logical phases, and greatly reduces scope creep.