How and why is this? Somehow it's true. If you see your organization or life as a collection of tests, you're set to succeed. But you need to make this a visual, visible, and measurable (external) system/process. How? Read on.
You have to know and define the *process* and *way* by which you will achieve your goals; you have to develop a tool and measurement system that throws off data that you can analyze. How? What's the data, what's the system, what's theprocess? What's the context? Read on.
You want to test and achieve your most important goals. Project management can help you get that. Goal statement and testing / verification of goals to achievement is necessary. You need data to *control and manage* your business. This gap *is* the system; the third leg of the define, do, achieve goal. It's how you adjust and get feedback.
A project is collection of tests. An organization is a collection of tests.
Tests arise in a couple of forms but the bottom line is that you have to be able to verify them *in* the computer, not in your head, against the model.
- Acceptance testing: does the product perform against the expected actions? (doing this requires you to document the expected actions or activity system as a model but this is hard to verify because it is subject. Subjective = bad for organizations)
- Unit testing: does the software created allow itself to be tested against a collection of tests, the policies and processes of the organization? Are the tests managed and maintained? If yes, this is good. This is visual, this is visible. Verification is good.
The activity of running a life or business *is* managing a collection of objectives and tests. This is often not done visually or systematically and is most commonly done randomly and individually. Bad!
As leaders, let's reduce the variability in our lives and organizations by managing things concretely and visibly; data-driven. Start unit testing your development projects today. Build your test suite as you build your business.
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