Life is a project

These past few weeks I have had several occasions to yet again witness the parallelisms between my personal and professional life. As a project manager, this is not so odd, of course, because projects are all around, even if you are not completely obsessed with project management. One example: one Friday evening a few weeks back, my six-year old (who is very into arts and crafts) announced she wanted to make a pinball machine [expression of the need, in project management terms]. It didn't take long for me to figure out that she was not thinking of the kind that I used to play on as a teenager: she wanted something along the lines of a wooden one she had played with at her after-school activity center [project definition and scope].

I told her that it was much too late to start work, and she ran away to sulk in a corner [negotiation and prioritization]. So I said that although we couldn't start work, we could draw the basic design [drafting of preliminary functional requirements]. The next morning, she [in her capacity of project "owner" or "sponsor"] woke me at seven, insisting that we start work immediately. So we did. I explained [with a view to project planning], however, that we should not start directly on the wooden version, and that it would be better to make a cardboard one [a model or prototype] first. As we worked, she kept a close eye on [monitored] progress, and made several change requests along the way. The most important one was her insistence that the prototype be fully functional (a good case of project creep if I ever saw one). This included mounting the cardboard structure on a plank of wood which was raised at one end (to ensure the proper inclination) and attaching close-pins by way of flippers. The end result, though definitely not a work of art, did in fact pass the factory testing (by me, in my role of developer/implementer) and the preliminary user acceptance tests (my daughter/sponsor). Of course, I was now beginning to get worried that we had used up all our time [resources] on the prototype, and dreaded having to inform my sponsor. She however was not worried; she was happy with the prototype, especially after having shown it to her sister [phase II of the user acceptance testing], who was duly impressed. This also signaled the official end of the project (the sign-off consisting of a "Thank you, daddy" and a kiss and a hug).