Stickyminds.com have just popped my latest article Going on a Picnic with James Watt online. I'm rather pleased with this one. It's a small piece of fiction written for the Management Chronicles section of their Better Software magazine. It cover's some important principles and techniques for getting - and more importantly keeping - customers actively collaborating on a software development project.
The story lines:
- Use the “picnic” principle when planning projects: agree, with no ambiguity, who brings what to the project. Ensure everyone knows the consequences to them and to the project of not turning up. No one wants to ruin the picnic.
- Don’t just deliver what’s in the contract – deliver an experience. Your goal is not to just have a picnic, but for everyone to enjoy it.
- Google “James Watt Steam Engine”. You’ll learn that great technical innovations must also be great commercial innovations if they’re to survive.
- When people aren’t delivering on their promises, dollarise their pain. Sometimes numbers speak louder than words.
