A lesson from life...

A couple of weeks ago, I'd blogged about learning lessons from life and applying it to other problems you encounter. I'd discussed how one can use principles of "evolution" to design a better comparator.

A follow up thought would be to see if you can apply lessons from life to your own life. I happened to scan through Robin Sharma's book "The Greatness Guide". One of the ideas mentioned there is that "Greatness" in life can be achieved through "evolution". You can read more of his thoughts on the topic in his article "Greatness by Evolution Vs Revolution".

I'm wondering if design groups could benefit from adapting the "Evolution" approach in their design process. A lot of us tend to change just about everything in a design from one generation to the next. I've also observed that there are some groups of people who tend to take the "Evolution" approach. Usually such people keep many things about their design the same from one "Generation" to another and restrict changes to a few target areas. It is also seen that the groups that do that are more successful than groups that take the "Change Everything" approach.

From a project management perspective, the "Evolution" approach makes a lot of sense. It is a good way to keep risks under control. Schedules are far more likely to be better predicted.

The "Change Everything" approach is believed to be superior since we tend to think that it is a good way to make large improvements. Is that really true? Is it better to be working on the problem to identify a way to get the same improvement with the least possible set of changes? Could innovators make such a change to their attitude to significantly improve the odds of success? Can projects with audacious goals be better executed by breaking them down into "Generations" which improve over time?

Just some thoughts. It would be interesting to see they make a difference in real life.