Surviving at the Software Industry (7) - Creating an Indominus Rex.

Do you remember when Claire wanted to create the biggest dinosaur so they could get more people going to the park in Jurassic World?

When you have a goal to achieve it is important to have a vision, a mayor achievement to reach and to feel accomplished when you get it. The vision doesn't have to be something as big as the dinosaur, but it has to help your team to feel inspired so they keep working on your project. You as a PM have to know what you should be leving out of a vision. It is as important to know what we want to do as to know what we don't; this is essential for maintaining the project risk level on a manageable level. When you have a formalized vision, now you have to make all your team to commit to it.

In the movie, we see that the main problem of the park is that they are not getting as many visitors as they once had. The money is the principal issue there. The Jurassic World has to get a Sponsorship from a weapon company so they can create the new dinosaur. On a real project it is actually the same thing. We need to get an executive sponsor, a person who is resposible to say if the application is ready. What is right and what is not.

After getting a sponsor, we have to communicate our project scope targets that you probably won't fulfill. As on the movie, you will experience complications on the making that will delay your delivery. When they try to accelerate the first show of the Indominus Rex is when everything starts to go crazy. Instead of giving an fixed time for every stage of the project give some time scopes so you have larger margins to deliver it on time.

It is important to share to the team in what stage of the project is everything at every moment. The Indominus Rex was being developped as a secret and no one knew how to react when it escaped. The plans have to be revealed and reviewed. The administration of the project and the developpers have to be on the same team, or it will be a mess.

So, here's the biggest problem of the mega-dinosaur on Jurassic World. They didn't consider the amount of risk of the project and they developped a destructive, uncontrollable weapon that killed hundreds of people and dinosaurs. We should devote a part of the budget to risk to serve as a cushion for risk management. The Top 10 Risks List is a tool in which we mention all the top risks at every phase of the project.

As a project manager, you have to create some stategies so you don't die on the process. You hace to be able to be accountable for the actions of your team and to administrate them right. The staff should be a manageable number where all have some work to do and feel like a part of the team. The dynamic of the team has to be appropiate for everyone. If you find people on your team that is being malicious, then you don't have to tolerate it and act as soon as possible, or they could make that your dinosaur become a weapon instead of an attraction without you knowing what happéned.

It is good to document your time use. It can be valuable information on the development of future projects, It also enables you to compare estimated data and actual time on every phase. We do not have any proof of this happening on the film.

When you have all these information in hand, then you can do a software development plan. they are not as detailed as the ones created before, but should be done anyway. If they had a good team on Jurassic World they wouldn't have had that tragedy and the Jurassic World would still be open.

I'm pretty sure this is the longer post I've written for this course, so yeah, here's a gif with the MVPs of the movie, the Velociraptors.