Hands-on Takeaways On Tech Project Management

What’s the profit? Or is it a bet? #

Consistent and stable profits are the backbone of business survival. Without an elaborate estimation of profit, the project is a gamble. While sometimes a brave jump in the fog is a chance for business success, most of the time we need to fight for survival.

Actually, profit estimation can also help the success of project itself by being more reasonable and fostering deeper understanding. It moves beyond mere rhetoric that can be common during the initial stages of project planning. Expertise contributes to fast and accurate estimation, which in turn contributes to being expertise.

Sometimes estimation can be tricky when revenues are not shown in quantitative terms. Take for example a data governance program to improve data quality. Consider counting the number of data quality issues per week due to existing problems and their associated labor hour costs, or even cost of goods sold. This data can be used as a basis for estimating potential revenue. In this case, reverse thinking will help to address complexities.

Besides, when multiple projects are concurrently utilizing the same resources, the revenue in terms of the most popular general equivalence can help decision-makers to make an optimazed resource distribution and avoid the potential arguments.

What was the company’s mission again? #

People get lost easily, and so do businesses. When faced with the temptation of external circumstances, or just feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks, recalling why you are doing what you are doing will keep your willpower strong and on the right path. We change strategies and approaches in response to rapid change, but not missions.

Consider two startup companies seemingly engaged in the same business of developing platforms for video courses. However, one gradually expanded its sales department, while the other focused on bolstering its product analysis team. This contrast highlights the importance of understanding each company’s unique mission. The former company’s mission revolves around increasing course sales, prioritizing the acquisition of new users over the retention of existing ones. In contrast, the latter company is driven by a mission to empower learners in mastering knowledge, necessitating a deeper focus on data analysis to track users’ learning progress.

Tradeoffs happen all the time. #

Here I’m gonna play a trick. In the section on profit estimation. I mentioned that the project could be a gamble without a quantified review. But in this section, I would say, every project is like a gamble until the results are in. Success or failure hinges on various factors—a successful model can falter under different circumstances.

As the ancient philosopher Lao Tzu advised, ‘seize the momentum and go with the flow.’ Along the path to our destination, a lot of twists and turns would we go through. This perspective isn’t about passivity, it’s how we deal with tradeoffs. Even elaborate research has done and long-term possibilities has considered, we need to make the guess. It akins to chess players thinking of a lot of interlocking steps at each move, but the final decision needs instinct guess.

According to Bayesian statistics, the stronger the prior knowledge, the faster the convergence. Having the knowledge needed for the core part of the project and understanding the necessary parts of the other aspects reduces the chances of being fooled.

Who makes the decision? #

Establishing a clear decision-making process is key to dealing with conflict. We must set boundaries for reaching a final decision. Once a decision is made, we should put aside all doubts and move together in the same direction.

In certain specific areas, we have more expertise than the decision-makers, which is why we were hired. There are instances where we know that following the decision they have made will lead to failure. However, even in such cases, we still need to go ahead in the way of consensus. We sometimes need to exercise patience for decision-makers, who also need time to learn and develop.