Chapter 17: (Web page design) Documenting Your Software Project 341 you
Chapter 17: Documenting Your Software Project 341 you and move down those venues instead. This is your opportunity to save others from a whack in the head by incorporating these successes and failures into your lessons learned document. Not everything works. It s the way of life. It s the way of projects. Thomas Edison patented 1,093 inventions that s 1,093 successes he had with projects. Now imagine how many things didn t work out. Each one of those failed projects represented an opportunity to learn and refine skills. Some of Edison s inventions even came as the result of trying to do one thing and ending up with a completely different result. This story is repeated time and time again in history. The invention of Sticky Notes came about as a result of trying to create glue. The invention backfired, and the glue only sort of stuck. What was tried and did not work is just as important as what was tried that did work. If you document, in your lessons learned documentation, the route that led to failure, you ll create a map that keeps someone else from going down that same road, wasting money and time racing to a dead end. Sometimes an entire project ends in failure. When that happens, the project truly becomes nothing more than a feasibility study. Documenting the causes of the failure can really help out in the long term. You can say whether you think future projects of this type can ever be feasible and offer specific recommendations that ultimately improve your company s strategic approach. Documenting the better approach It s a question we all hate: If you could change any one thing, what would it be? If you could go back in time, knowing then what you know now, what would you do differently? What would have been a better approach than the one you took? While the exercise may seem unoriginal, or even pass , it is judicious and more than just an exercise in analytical reasoning. Keep in mind that you are creating a document to be read for future projects. Telling a better approach to take, even if only in the theoretical sense, can give the next project a better starting place than the one you used. Offering advice for future project managers Having just completed a project, you know what worked and what didn t. You know what you would do differently, and you know what subtle changes you would make if you had the chance to do it all over again.
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