Most Software Development Project start with the same thing: somewhere in an organization, someone gets an idea. And there’s where our challenge starts…
All ideas tend to have the same properties: there not specific, unmeasurable, it’s not clear if there achievable, there non-relevant and specifically: there not time-bound. In other words: there not SMART. And no: I’m not saying there, in essence, not Smart (a completely different thing, if you ask me).
This is, in my humble opinion, the sheer beauty of it all; it’s all measured in perception, emotion and (personal) opinion. But we’re in software: so that’s an exact science isn’t it? (Of course it isn’t) At least, we need to make something, create that idea. But how do we make it SMART? Or don’t we need to do that?
In most project you see the first, we put lots and lots of effort in making ideas SMART. This means that, before we even start thinking about writing some actual code, we have spend lots of our precious resources in capturing something thats basically an emotion into specific and measurable elements. Weird, isn’t it? (Sounds pretty masculine too.)
Why shouldn’t we try to keep the idea into the ‘emotional’? And simply try to proof the hopes that lye beneath that idea? Any Idea, at least in our line of business, contains something we actually need to capture: the problem. Focus on that, and then we can finally find out where the value is to be found. Even within an Idea.
