Write the Story for Your Project
Are you leading an epic adventure and don’t even know it?
When you are leading a project, it helps you and those around you to have a simple story of the impact you plan to make.
As one of my mentors always challenged me, “How will the world be different when you're done?”
For example, when I was kicking off the Cloud Security Guide a few years back, I challenged the team to write the movie poster or news headline.
To model the way, I shared my example first:
A winning team with great results for customer success on the platform. Do for the cloud what we did for .NET. Create a compelling glide path for developers and solutions architects to smooth adoption of Azure.
Here are the specific instructions I gave the team at the time:
I’m a fan of stories and telling compelling ones. I think we all have stories in our mind. Write your few line story (imagine the movie poster or the news headline) of the project. Get creative. Tap into your passion.
Here are some of the examples I got back:
Example 1
The essential security guidance for current and aspiring Azure architects and developers.
Concise, relevant, scenario-based guidance to ensure you make the right decisions.
Packaged and presented in a compelling, easy-to-consume manner.
Example 2
Create the bible for azure app development. MSDN is reference, the azure guide is where you go first if you want to understand:
1) The key scenarios for how you may want to use Azure
2) How to be successful, secure and effective in each scenario
Create a team of expertise on Azure that can be leveraged for future success, both independently as consultants and together as a team for future Azure efforts
Example 3
A rapidly consumable, highly relevant guide demonstrating easily actionable behaviors and activities for securing your Azure implementation.
As you can see, the examples varied. What’s important is that the exercise helped everybody get their head in the game. It effectively helped everybody expand what they thought was possible and to envision a brighter future to deliver against and shape our path.
It’s a simple exercise, but it’s a great way to begin with the end in mind, clarify your vision and mission, and make your projects the epic adventures that they really can be.
Nothing beats smart people on a cadence shipping ideas and making things happen on an epic adventure.
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