I recently found out “The Cult of Done Manifesto“, a provocative and clever way to look at processes.
As we all know Project Managers risk to slip from being focused on the goals, to being focused on the processes which is a terrible mistake as, obviously, processes are only means to reach comfortably the goals. Too much hair splitting on spreadsheets and reviews shift attention away and generates anger in the team, which start to look at processes as enemies.
This is very true especially in internet projects, where fast response times are required as well as quick adaptation to change, that could make the difference between living or dying.
Some points may seem quite provocative, but in my opinion they ignite useful thinking in a clever way.
The Cult of Done Manifesto
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you’re done you can throw it away.
- Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
- People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Destruction is a variant of done.
- If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
- Done is the engine of more.
