Don’t place the finish line before the start

It seems like common since that before you reach the finish line, you must first get past the start let alone everything in between. Yet you see it all the time where organizations envision the finish line, but forget that they must first figure out where to start and then plan out the best route to actually make it there.

This is where you see many ideas fail. Whether it is a vision for your business technology or for a new product you are trying to get to market, it is easy to “know” how you want it to be in the end. The hard part is understanding how to build a proper plan to ensure that you get there. Visualizing a road map can be difficult. You may understand how to do many of the things that can get you where you want to go, but putting it all together is another issue completely. Not to mention all the bumps in the road along the way.

There have been many great ideas that despite their worth have never seen the light of day or if they did, it was too late. It is not just limited to business technology or product management, it can be any idea.

Without proper planning it is very easy to get thrown off track.

• Ran out of money
• Disagreement among the team on what is the “right” way
• No clear set of requirements
• Was not feasible from the start
• Plus a whole lot more gotchas…

Having a vision is obviously where everything starts. However to bring that vision to life you have to first determine where the start of that vision is and then figure out how to get there.

It is not always the visionary that understands how to bring the vision to life.