Starting off right

We need to set ourselves up for success. To succeed, we need to know what it means to succeed. That’s the starting point. Define success. Not a simple task so let’s start with the problem statement and see where that goes.

Problem: Duplicate photos take up space

Thoughts? Questions? Good. The problem is vague. There are many solutions to the above problem. For instance, a few that quickly came to mind:

1. Buy and install a new hard drive
2. Buy more cloud space
3. Delete all duplicate photos
4. Do nothing (are duplicate photos really a problem?)

Each solution is different. There are pros and cons to each one. The correct solution cannot be determined without asking questions and verbalizing thoughts. This is where the team discussion should occur. The goal of the discussion is to clarify the problem and create a shared understanding. This particular project is being done by a team of 1, but the discussion took place nonetheless.

• Q. Can I buy a new hard drive?
  A. Yes, but then I’ll just have more files I can’t sort through

A simple question with a simple answer, but the answer gives us more than a first glance reveals. more files I can’t sort through is the key phrase. The answer gives a clue about what is important about duplicate photos taking up space. Sorting photos is difficult with a lot of duplicates. That’s fair. But

• Q. Why is “duplicate photos taking up space” an issue?
  A. It makes my backup strategy difficult. I never know if I’ve uploaded a photo to the cloud or not
• Q. So the problem isn’t really that duplicates take up too much space, it’s that you only want to upload one instance of a photo to the cloud for backup?
  A. Yes, I want to switch to a lower storage tier to save a little bit of money.
• Q. Can the duplicate photos be deleted?
  A. Yes, I don’t see why not.
• Q. On your local computer or in the cloud or both?
  A. Ideally I’d want the cloud to alert me when I was uploading a duplicate file, but we don’t control that. How about just delete the duplicates on the local computer, and we can discuss a solution for the cloud problem later. Maybe I’ll just start a new cloud account and upload all my photos once the duplicates have been removed.

Perfect. Now rephrase the problem and present to the group.

Problem: There are duplicate photo files on my local computer that need to be removed so that I can upload all my photos to the cloud at once and use the least amount of space necessary.

Great. That can be done. The success criteria for the project has also been implicitly defined with this problem statement. If all duplicate photos have been deleted from the local computer, success has been achieved.

Remember this success criteria. Discuss it often. Revisit if necessary. Projects that lose sight of (or never have) success criteria will fail. They fail because there is no clear target. Create a target, create success criteria.

Now that we know what it means to succeed, let’s move onto the next step.

Side question for later: What would have happened if we immediately dove into one of the 4 solutions from above?