VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Do you know that, according to a renowned American research and advisory firm specialized in IT, in two thousand and eleven (2011) eighty per cent (80%) of software projects failed?
But keep calm. Five years later during a recent IT and cybersecurity Symposium celebrated in London full of CIOs, CEOs, CTOs and other relevant C positions, the same firm decreased the rate to a calming seventy-two per cent (72%)
To complete the picture, another famous strategic management consulting firm, have declared recently that seventeen per cent (17%) of these projects go so bad that they can threaten the very existence of the company
This means that European Economy is losing every year one hundred and forty two (142) billions of euros due to project failure. Around five per cent (5%) of his GDP… Too much money to thrown out by the toilet. Don’t you think?
Let’s recognize it. What we obtain from these projects is normally something more expensive that we expected, long-awaited for everybody, far from our initial expectations and finally hard to be adopted by nobody.
Now, let’s visualize for a while the ideal world where all IT people know to manage their projects, use the right methodologies, have access to the right tools and where obviously unicorns exist. To achieve this situation then, we need to admit that everybody commits sins. Which are the more obvious?
Pride, for instance. We believe we’re the smartest guy in the class. We tend to think for others believing we’ve got the solution for anything. We always fall into temptation to say what we have to do to solve something instead to say what’s the problem.
We sin of gluttony also. We always want everything. Frequently we try to take on more than we can analyze, manage, treat or digest. And that means more details, time and mistakes.
Another sin is laziness. That is: show me what and I’ll choose. It’s the best option when we don’t know what we want or don’t. Reasonable, but not applicable to something such intangible as software…
And we sin of envy also. Grass is greener on the other side of the fence. We want always what we see in neighbor’s house although we don’t understand what is it for… But remember, people don’t lie when they talk about software, but never say all the truth…
Nevertheless, there’s still space for hope in this flood of tears. We know what to do to change things up and improve the statistics. Would you like to getting to know?
The first thing is putting focus on the user to observe and listen to him. He’s the king and the key for our success. We should avoid assumptions and speculations and go directly to the knowledge’s source
Second is a resolute bet in design and touch things prior to take a leap of faith. We must create realistic prototypes we can see, touch and feel. As somebody once said: Busy hands busy mind
Third is a sane obsession in test and validate. This detects mistakes, we learn from them and advance is possible. Remember, the path towards success is not a straight line. Let’s apply then common sense and do it as we know: trial-error, trial-error
Fourth is simply create and bring value in an agile way. Let’s work together during the path assuring we bring to life what we’ve designed initially and providing iteratively bites of value we can enjoy before the end of entire process.
And keep in mind. Do it always getting out of our comfort zone, playing and allowing all without prejudices, giving us enough time and space to be truly creative and innovative.
Simple. Isn’t it? So, all I’ve been explaining you is the any project's foundation that pursues an ideal user experience, something thousands of companies are practicing right now, not only Apple.
This is squaring the circle combining technology, user needs and business goals...
…something that happens when Design Thinking meets Agile. Let’s discover, define and think up first to be able to prototype and test later and, once we've got things clear enough, go for build the product and bring value constantly to reach the desired success.
What’s this story’s secret message? Software projects can go well… ask me how
