Little Thoughts…

The Vision… And Where Do Ideas Come From?

Chapter 4 of Making Things Happen begins with a few key points that everyone should follow when it comes to working in teams or groups. First off, it’s always best to write your ideas down because as the author points out, it’s better to rely on writing than the unstable human mind. For me, writing my thoughts down helps out because then I don’t have to worry about trying to store all of that information in my mind where it can easily get lost. The author goes on to explain how each group working together is going to write things down differently, it can be in a bulleted list form or a 50 page document. Everyone does not work the same and because each team may be a different size, recording your goals and objectives can be done in a number of ways.

There are 5 goals of good vision, they are simplifying, intentional, consolidated, inspirational, and memorable. Simplifying is all about talking the vision up to other team members and getting familiar with it. Berkun says it should get used to much that it gets memorized and that way the Project Manager can make adjustments to it as needed. Intentional is all about getting the goals for the vision. Consolidation is all about having the ideas come together, from one place. Inspirational deals with having a problem that let’s everyone connect to help solve. And Memorable deals with the goals and objectives making sense and staying with the group members throughout the duration of the project.

The next section of the chapter talks about writing the vision. There is no set length or detail, but overall length does not equal quality. After the vision is written it should be revised and worked on. Also, it’s a good idea to have one person do all of the writing to keep things consistent and together. Mission statements should be clear and concise, the author gives some examples of what not to write inside this chapter. It’s good to keep the MS short, to the point, and strong. Overall, I feel this chapter has helped give me clarity when it comes to writing mission statements and goals and the vision of a project. I am sure I will use this information when writing the rest of my modules for this class!

Chatper 5 in Making Things Happen is all about the design process and how to go about getting to that stage. Berkun talks about the design stage as being something people are afraid of. They usually don’t know where to start which is why they need to have a firm vision and goals in place to start with. Ideas come from people and everyone is capable of coming up with greats things, it’s executing them that takes practice and time. I know when I design things, I am very critical on myself and I like to show my work to others to get different opinions I hadn’t though of before. Not all designs are good, either. It’s OK to come up with bad designs because you will learn from them. Believe me, I know! =p Also, don’t always think “inside the box.” It’s alright to think of strange and weird ideas because you never know what’s going to work and what won’t. Berkun tells us that sometimes when we think “inside the box” we may pass up good ideas that we could have achieved by thinking differently.

Another big topic covered in this chapter is designing for the customer. The author tells us that designing with the customer in mind will yield promising results and if one part of the project is designed without the other in mind, one of them is bound to fail. I completely agree with this idea because the customer is the person you are creating the project for in the first place and if it doesn’t work for them then you’re whole idea is blown. If you design with the customer in mind then your project is bound to work as long as you put a lot of thought, time and effort into it.