Principles use in Projects

[PY8]

Hello:
Any guidance on use of principles in projects?
The best I have for it: the project's deadline, budget dollars, qualifications of the outcome, e.g., for a project to complete an intellectual property license, principles include that the license be exclusive, that it give the company control over branding, that up-front payments amount to less than 20% of the total, that windfall royalties be covered, etc.
regards,
PY

[Brent]

Depends on the project, doesn't it?

I have a project to catalogue my music into certain playlists. I don't need to specify budget dollars for that.

[Tony Osime]

The usefulness of principles lies in their universality. A useful outcome for this thread would be a list of principles we could all agree, apply to all projects. Any time we set up a project, we could quickly check to make sure we have observed the principles. This should result in better projects for everyone.

A good test for a principle is to simply ask the question "why?" repeatedly and see the direction it takes you.

[Brent]

Interesting! Okay, here are all the Projects that aren't part of my fulltime job. What principles do they share?

Categorize music by mood
Go out on five dates this month
Close JVDS account
Develop Scholarly Database working prototype
Draw thirty heads from various angles, especially profiles
Read through both Japanese course books
Sign up for ING Direct checking account
Download all remaining files from {URL redacted}

[madalu]

Interesting! Okay, here are all the Projects that aren't part of my fulltime job. What principles do they share?

Categorize music by mood
Go out on five dates this month
Close JVDS account
Develop Scholarly Database working prototype
Draw thirty heads from various angles, especially profiles
Read through both Japanese course books
Sign up for ING Direct checking account
Download all remaining files from {URL redacted}

I'd agree Brent. Why should it matter if these projects share or don't share principles? I think principles are an intuitive part of project planning--you don't always have to think through them mechanically.

"Go out on five dates per month." You probably have a lot of ideas about the type of individual your interested in getting to know, what constitutes a good date, etc. These are going to be unique to you and to this project.

"Sign up for ING Direct Checking Account." You probably have certain ideas about how you want your checking account to function, what type of balance you should keep in it, etc. Likewise, you probably have some reasons/principles for choosing an online banking account (ease of use, fees, etc.).

Re: Tony's post. There's no science of principles. I don't think that there is a list of principles that all of us could agree on. We might, of course, have certain moral principles that should come into play on all our projects. For instance, I don't want to hurt or take advantage of anyone; I want to spend my time and money responsibly; etc. But beyond that, principles are going to be utterly unique.

[Tony Osime]

I'd agree Brent. Why should it matter if these projects share or don't share principles? I think principles are an intuitive part of project planning--you don't always have to think through them mechanically.

"Go out on five dates per month." You probably have a lot of ideas about the type of individual your interested in getting to know, what constitutes a good date, etc. These are going to be unique to you and to this project.

"Sign up for ING Direct Checking Account." You probably have certain ideas about how you want your checking account to function, what type of balance you should keep in it, etc. Likewise, you probably have some reasons/principles for choosing an online banking account (ease of use, fees, etc.).

Re: Tony's post. There's no science of principles. I don't think that there is a list of principles that all of us could agree on. We might, of course, have certain moral principles that should come into play on all our projects. For instance, I don't want to hurt or take advantage of anyone; I want to spend my time and money responsibly; etc. But beyond that, principles are going to be utterly unique.

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Hi Madalu, interesting comments and a nice challenge.
We can be happy with where we are, or we can choose to do better. If we choose to do better, we might try a positive attitude that looks for things we can use to become better.

I think principles should eventually become intuitive but to reach that stage may take a lifetime of development. In fact, the reason why we use principles is to short circuit the lifetime of learning by trial and error. For simple things, we can keep everything in our heads. When they get more complex, we need checklists. We could, one day, know the checklist so well we do not need the physical list -we just use our mental list.

Incidentally one criticism of principles is that they limit your creativity -so thinking outside the box should be one of the principles!

I have rambled a bit here -but simply put, everything comes from something more general; we define principles as going back along that path until we reach a useful point or perpective to look at other items and compare.

I hope this helps...

[Tony Osime]

Interesting! Okay, here are all the Projects that aren't part of my fulltime job. What principles do they share?

Categorize music by mood
Go out on five dates this month
Close JVDS account
Develop Scholarly Database working prototype
Draw thirty heads from various angles, especially profiles
Read through both Japanese course books
Sign up for ING Direct checking account
Download all remaining files from {URL redacted}

Thanks for the challenge Brent: Since our objective is to improve our project management, we should should not simply state what principles your projects share but also consider what principles your projects "should" share, just in case they could be improved by using principles. On this basis consider some principles of goal setting:

Principle One: Goals should be specific outcomes not activities.
Other goal setting principles we could consider for projects:
Goals should have a quantitative and qualitative measure of success.
Goals should be time bound.
Goals should have the best measures (metrics) for their success.
Goals should have the "right" amount of stretch.
Goals should be viewed from different perspectives.

So let us look at each of your projects from this set of principles:
Categorize music by mood
-outcome yes (but only just)
-time bound: no (i.e. by the end of the month)
-measure of success: no (i.e. so that I can..."you complete the objective saying why you want to categorize music")
-right amount of stretch: not much (look for a new goal that comes from the project such as learning something new about moods or categories)
-viewed from different perspectives: no (how would your spouce see this project? -how can we improve this project using your spouce's perspective?)

I have just looked at one of your projects using one (set) of principles. There should be several other principles we can use to assess projects.

Over to you Brent!

[Brent]

Thanks for the challenge Brent: Since our objective is to improve our project management, we should should not simply state what principles your projects share but also consider what principles your projects "should" share, just in case they could be improved by using principles.

Seems to me that this is applying an external set of theoretical principles to an existing reality. Wouldn't it be better to extract principles from reality? Why do you think that these principles should apply to any given set of projects?

On this basis consider some principles of goal setting:

Principle One: Goals should be specific outcomes not activities.
Other goal setting principles we could consider for projects:
Goals should have a quantitative and qualitative measure of success.
Goals should be time bound.
Goals should have the best measures (metrics) for their success.
Goals should have the "right" amount of stretch.
Goals should be viewed from different perspectives.

Not to be combative, but could you please explain, for each of the above principles, why you chose them?

For example, let's take the project, "Categorize music by color." I have no need to do that by any given date. It's a huge project anyway; I have about 2,600 songs to categorize. I don't know how long it will take. I don't need any sense of urgency. What would I gain by setting a deadline?