When the going gets tough the tough get going - Billy Ocean When the going gets weird the weird turn pro - Hunter S Thompson Good, better, meta - Mark Stringer
So writing and thinking about the successful project that I’ve just been working on got me thinking about this “two stream” model of project management. There’s a virtual value stream (I’m still experimenting with the names for these) and there’s a virtuous value stream. The first value stream is the one where you get value from the “idea” of a project, the second one is the value stream where you get value from the reality of the product.
One way of seeing project management is as managing the transition between a value stream which rewards the idea and a value stream which rewards the reality.
This is a big idea and I was very pleased with myself when I thought of it, for about five minutes. Then I realised that it also applied to other kinds of projects, like trying to write a book about project management.
Saying that you’re going to write a book (and I’ve done this several, if not dozens, of times) gives you a positive boost. Starting writing the book, similarly, has positive feelings associated with it. Even, as I managed on the previous attempt at a book called “Delivering the impossible.” Sharing chapters online can get positive feeback from friends and supporters. But pretty soon after that, the positive reinforcment runs out. The difficulties of expressing the ideas that you’ve either only explained to yourself, or managed to make sound plausible in a conversation in a cafe or a pub, now have to be commited to paper. And when you hit this plateau, it’s very easy to give up.
So, I’m going to get back to software development in another post, but for now, let’s just think about how I might manage getting a book about software development actually delivered.
I’m brainstorming now.