In college, I was taught that projects should end with an implementation or prototype, not just the idea itself. Before, it wasn’t so important to me, and I didn’t take it so deeply to heart. After all, I was new to the industry, and just coming up with concepts gave me enough pleasure to dwell on them. However, today, when I have the opportunity to professionally engage in commercial projects, I repeat this doctrine from research as a mantra. Why? You will find the answer in this article.
Creating is fun
Creating new spaces, stories, or worlds can really be a lot of fun. Writing scripts, coming up with endings, plot paths, or creating a character, their personality, problems, and ways to solve them. After all, this is what humans were made for. Every day we create something in our life, whether it’s a lunch idea or big plans for the future, every day we go through this process. Everything that surrounds us should have been invented once, and only then created. Even the simplest things that surround us. Of course, I understand that it’s not so easy for everyone to come up with new things, but I personally feel that this is just an innate trait every person that someone just more or less developed in their life. It’s simple, easy and fun. It is a process in which nothing but our own imagination restricts us. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are often logical gaps in such an idea. After all, this is strictly a creative process that needs to be unique, unprecedented, abstract, and not organized and neat.
But, let’s say, there comes a time when we want to implement such an idea, and not just put it in a box. After all, it seems good, memorable, and would probably be well received by its users. So why not give it a try? If you have such an idea, I highly recommend it, but keep in mind that the implementation itself may be more complex.
Implementing a project is a challenge
However, when implementing a project, you can not afford such freedom as when creating the idea itself. Unfortunately, there are limitations here, such as a certain amount of time spent on execution, budget, human resources, and team skills. terms of implementation, technological limitations. These are barriers that we cannot overcome. We must recognize that there are various factors that influence the final shape of our vision. This is why it is so important to focus on the very purpose or value that we want to convey when implementing our idea.
What should it give the user? What benefits will it bring to the potential recipient and why will they be interested in it? What do I offer through my idea, what do I bring and what do I get? Before starting a project, you should ask yourself these questions. Without answering them, we won’t be able to determine the actual value and target point our project. Without an answer to this question, I guarantee you that you will wander in the fog of hundreds of your subsequent ideas, the implementation of which will further and further distance you from completing the project. This approach is likely to lead to excessive and previously unforeseen costs and lead to discontinuation of application only at the prototype stage, which is unsuitable for publication, much less commercialization. By setting a goal, you can avoid many unpleasant surprises. But this will allow you to provide a finished product based on previous assumptions. This will allow you to implement the project within the planned time and budget, based on the actual capabilities of your team.
But I have noticed that many developers, unfortunately, suffer from a certain condition, which I personally called the ‘dissatisfied artist team’. Its symptoms are a painful desire to improve the application, constantly making changes to the project, dissatisfaction with your final work, and, above all, inability to complete the project. This is a team that meets not only developers, but also customers who, for obvious reasons, would like the app they pay for to be as good as possible. However, often in this frenzy of creativity, they lose their purpose the implementation of the idea that they came up with and constant fixes make the application really can and becomes more aesthetic, but it does not meet the basic requirements of the project. This is the most serious disease spread across the entire industry, and in extreme cases, the only cure for it is only the end result that does not meet expectations, which is the exhaustion of a limited budget/time.
Of course, in the vast majority of cases, it is possible to bring such a person to reason at the right time – the best way is to show two documents. The first is a document containing what we still have to do before the deadline, and the second is a presentation of the cost of human-made amendments. Very often, this acts as a bucket of cold water that cools the still warm and fresh creations of the person responsible for the project.
Personally, I fully understand this, up to a certain point, I believe that every customer/client/developer should step in if their vision is violated. However, as project managers, we cannot allow these changes to turn the project on its head. We also cannot allow them to delay project implementation or lead to budget depletion. We also want it to come out as good as possible, because it is our calling card. However, if someone imposes a specific time and budget on us, we can fulfill this order as best as possible, but only within the framework that really allows us to do so. That is why it is so important to properly plan all activities, give recommendations and create a concept, an implementation plan that will best indicate to us a goal that we can adhere to together.
Changes, edits, corrections, and comments appear almost always, and to some extent we can fully accept them, we often make them to increase customer satisfaction, but each of them is always expensive. Remember that the customer and the contractor are playing on the same team, and both always care about the same thing. Achieving the goal, completing the investment, making a profit, and getting a beautiful end product. However, we can’t afford to have someone from the team shoot us by themselves and then develop a concept that we didn’t agree to when we signed the contract.
The final product completes our cooperation
The end result of any cooperation in the context of project implementation is always the ‘ final product”’ But what is it really? The definition often depends on the atmosphere of cooperation. If both sides play as a team, with the goal of achieving data and concrete assumptions, and adhering to pre-prepared tactics, then the final product is a project ready for commercialization the success of which may even be the seed of further cooperation in the future. However, if both sides enter the implementation field in a complete misunderstanding, without any goal, plan or tactics, it is difficult for such cooperation to produce any valuable product.
