Happy Friday! - Food for thought

Its Friday!

Hope everyone is looking forward to a great weekend, I know I am. Anyone feel the weekends are too short?

Dr. Dobbs Journal released an interesting article on Defining Project Success.

http://www.drdobbsjournal.com/architect/202800777;jsessionid=SKDXCBP3KCIKGQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN?_requestid=45342

I thought it brought up some interesting points. How do you define a successful project? Delivering ontime or overtime but with high quality? Delivering under budget or happy employees?

For me, this article gave me somethings to think about, why do we have to choose? Why is a project defined successful if it meets stakeholder needs but comes overbudget and late, should we not strive to have those same goals but also make the stakeholders happy because they paid for the project as much as they thought instead of double? I don't think those same rules would apply to getting a car or other physical projects built. If I order a porche, I order it with a defined cost written into the contract. Ofcourse, I expect high quality and what I ordered - but would I be okay if at the end I got what I ordered, with the high quailty of the Porche, but was asked to pay more than we agreed on? I probably would not, but than again... I guess I won't be buying a Porche soon anyway!!!

Anyway that is just food for thought from me. Would projects be more successful, with all criteria, if they used tools along with their processes? We can see, Agile projects seem to be more successful with the criteria the author outlines, but would they be even more successful with tools in place, that can help them govern their projects and attack problems early when they are identified? Also, its staggering how poorly - even with the modified criteria - the off shore projects are doing. Clearly, these types of projects really need tools and processes in place to help make them more successful. Perhaps Rational Software can help?