Different Perspectives Within A Projects

“A project is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources.” By PMI.Org

An Analytics projects resonates the same project definition. Like any project as well, consist of different stake holders from project sponsor to developer. Each with own interested, deliverable & expectations: Perspective.

In this article we will be seeing the common type of perspective noticeble in projects. Usualy having all 3 type of perstive in a project is a perfect blend for fruitfull outcome. And only using one can be a downfall.

Engineering Perspective

What technology to use? How to collect the data? What script to use? The very technical questions. Think about how to build the wheel. This is the Engineering perspective.

Pros

• Absolute necessary to realise the project. Without this view, the project just will stay as an idea

Cons

• Neglects the overall project objective/value when the project started purely based on building the wheel(technical). We can build a wheel, so we going to build one. We think about how we going to use the wheel later.

Design Perspective

What data to collect? How to put data together? Is the data make sense?

Think about putting different technical blocks to build a workable solution. Like merging wheel, horse, etc to build a wagon.

Pros

• A layer between business needs & technical capability. The much-needed synergy.

Cons

• "A jack of all trades" & king of none. Can lead to difficulty communication between stack holders talking different lingos & chances of producing mismatched solution.

Business Perspective

How to showcase to senior management? How to perform call of action from the reported KPI? How long will take to investigate the root cause?

Think about is the build wagon can carry enough load move fast as possible to beat the competition and produce commercial value.

Pros

• Value & outcome oriented. Ensure the effort worth the investment & this gives commercial value for an analytics project.

Cons

• Business from Mars & technical from Venus. Time pressure & treating data project like pure commercial transaction can lead to project failure. Analytics project not a build once & sell once products. If you have work in a data warehouse projects, should have realised it take time to stabilise & mature to produce expected outcome.

In my next writeup how to synergise the different perspective within a project to produce a collective outcome:  “Value”.