Tariq Hussein

 

I have normally considered my final year project to be the best of my personal projects despite it having an academic purpose. My experiences and understanding gained from work since graduating has grown in the last three years. The most notable of these gains is my insight into the world of project management - gathering requirements, breaking the requirements down, prioritising and estimating. 

The aim of this post is to revisit my final year project from the perspective of project management. In revisiting the project, I hope to see my project in the light of project management failure rather than technical success. Most importantly,  I want to try to identify the cause of these failures in order to prevent my future projects from suffering the same fate. 

Despite the numerous screenshots I had published for my final year project, the project failed to meet basic user expectations. If the project had been released to the public as a product, its life would have been almost non-existent as it would have served no purpose in either the simulation or the entertainment market. The only hope this project would have had was in the hands of other developers - the suitability of  which is questionable considering rival technologies do a better job of design and documentation.

 I feel that I have been deceptive for not calling the project a failure. This has in turn kept my standards as low as they have always been since I started programming at the age of eleven.  The final version of the project included a previously generated light map, a single level, a crude visual interface and the ability to travel on the tracks (you could also select which split of a track to take to by using the arrow keys). From the perspective of the user the result is clearly amusing.  

Is this a failure of project management? There is no doubt in my mind that it is. I have listed some of the key issues as:

• an undetailed user requirements list,
• the user requirements list was biased towards the developer,
• project tasks were not broken down properly,
• unrealistic prioritisation,
• lack of a push to complete objectives,
• and poor estimations.

A quick glance at the list above shows that some of the less attractive aspects of development were rushed and marked off as complete in order to avoid their unpleasant nature. These tasks showed the true nature of the project and the amount of work that is needed in order to complete it. This felt overwhelming and left me with two choices; to hide the bigger picture and just work on the project until it “feels” complete or to face these mind numbing decisions and solve the problems that arise.

There should be no surprises as to what my cowardly decision was and as a result the project suffered a rather undeserved failure. The project became more about me as the developer and less about the core concept or the end user. This is why I feel the project is a technical success. The technical knowledge learnt has given me further insight into the challenges involved.  Unfortunately,  lack of project management practice is a missed opportunity that would have given the project a greater purpose and may have challenged my technical skills further.

I would love to blame the failure to manage the project properly on my love for technical skill, but in reality the project had tested the weaknesses in my thought process and I failed by running from the harder and less emotionally positive decisions. Clearly a well planned out project seems to provide for a better and well deserved portfolio.

 I’ll end this post by placing a reminder for me and possibly many others that a good project needs serious project management. Serious project management leads to a well deserved end product that will be appreciated by everyone. Serious project management also leads to better real world relevant technical skills. Finally, if you are rushing to plan then you’re planning wrong.

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I’ve decided to migrate to Wordpress as a more efficient and effective means to present content related to me. The advantages are pretty clear for me - a better management interface, no development costs and a wide variety of features that would have been separate projects to implement.

In regards to my old content, I will be adding most of it one by one. I hope to still have a copy of my final year project up but I want to use this migration as means of boosting my out of work productivity. This probably means more development projects and a restart on my weight loss goal.

Thanks for visiting and I hope my content will be entertaining and informative.

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