The Art of Collaboration for Project Success

I admit that there are many factors influencing the success of the project. I am not the discoverer of this topic, of course. However, this text is the fruit of my brainwork, the result of my personal observations and thoughtful analysis.

Among lots of projects we’ve been a part of, I observe the crucial importance of such a phenomenon as synergy, which occurs when the customer and the team work together on a project. In this article, I want to share my observations about the role of joint efforts.

The Paradox of Individual Responsibility

It would be naive to think that the project's success depends only on us.

When you give your best in a project, it seems that everything depends solely on you. When you take responsibility for your work, it seems that you are the one who decides what will happen in the end. That's right, but not quite right. Thinking in this way, you miss a lot of things. For example, the rest of the project participants.

This is a cunning and insidious trap - another paradox. While developing a software project, the more one thinks that everything depends solely on them, the less it coincides with reality.

Take me for example. When I think that all the marketing is on me, and the rest of the team are just performers, everything starts to crumble. I work harder, I spend more time staying late at work. But there is still no result.

If I think that only I can pull this project out, only I know how to do it right, and the rest don't understand anything - this is arrogance, isn't it?

So how to get out of this trap?

Escaping the Trap

It turns out that everything is simpler.

I'm as much a part of this story of the project as anyone else involved.

When I work on an equal footing with everyone in the project, I'm just doing my job. And I see reality as it is. That is, I accept difficulties and obstacles and do not pretend that they do not exist and everything is fine. Sometimes this means changing the course of the project.

And yes! I can choose the participants, I can change the team. For this, I need to recognize the importance of their contribution and their role.

The role of individual efforts cannot be excluded. However, this is not the decisive factor in a software project's success. The project will not survive on the individual efforts of one side, although it will exist for some time.

What then? Synergy! The key to success is in it. It is a synergy that gives the whole system a new dimension and gives it new properties.

The Power of Joint Efforts

When the team and the customer collaborate harmoniously, the project's potential for development and success is boundless. This collaboration provides the project with a holistic approach, where the combined efforts of all involved propel it towards achievement and innovation.

I have seen projects that have gone into growth and development, started to increase users, change the concept, and only get better from this with joint efforts. The Plei App started only as an application for soccer players, and now the same application also helps field managers to lease fields. This became a reality thanks to the involvement of all participants in the project.

There are also examples of projects in which the customer is fighting for the project by themselves. The customer is deeply invested in their project and advocates for its development. But, alas, this project is not a priority for the dev teams at all.

The project is technically stalling. The customer changes the developer, and the project is still experiencing difficulties in development because yet another dev team still doesn’t care.

And then the customer is lucky enough to find a cool dev team. The project starts to move to a completely different level - there were Google spreadsheets under the hood, and now there is a custom code that can be converted as you like. It is from this point that the project begins to develop.

Just as a game cannot proceed if one of the teams fails to show up, and a boat cannot sail far if rowed with only one oar on one side, a project will not see success if only one side contributes.

The team and the customer work together and act in the best interests of the project. In this case, the project begins to develop and flourish.

Conclusion

While individual efforts hold value, they are not the sole determinants of a project's fate. The success of a project cannot be attributed solely to the customer's efforts or the team's efforts.

It's the collaborative interplay between the team and the customer that gives the project a new dimension, propelling it towards development and success.

It is the synergy between the team and the customer that ignites the project's potential, transforming it into a dynamic, living entity that evolves and adapts to meet the demands of the project landscape.