What is the success criteria for your project?

A shared vision that most projects get wrong.

Short Story

In one my previous companies, we had a technical team overhaul. The new leaders decided to rewrite our current project.

After all the launch meetings with cool new project names like butterfly or phoenix, I asked our technical leadership, what is the success criteria for our project.

The answer was, “when we deliver all the features that product management has asked for”

“When we deliver all the features that product management team has asked for”

From this answer, I knew we were screwed and it was time for me to look for a new job.

Contractor vs Employee

Ever wonder what the difference between a contractor and an employee.

Ask the question, what is the success criteria for your project.

A contractor will immediately get the list of things they are asked to do before their contract ends. This is their success criteria. If they do x, y and z, they get paid.

We hope an employee does not think the same way. We hope that your fellow co-workers have an “owner” mind set instead of a “consultant” mind set.

As an exercise, let us build a water park

Imagine that our project is to create a water park. So we built a gigantic slide, a…