Planning

I wasn't in class on the day of the egg assignment because I stayed lated at the office to work on a project that I'm managing.  Luckily, I have something to writ about that's relevant to the Planning Process.

Specifically, I had a vision for a new product offering for our firm and my CEO liked the idea.  After reading my proposal (product outline and development plan, financial projections, etc.) he gave me the "go ahead, a budget, some team support and cut my projected time frame down a little bit (to put the pressure on).  

So far I have gone through 4.5 of the five steps of the planning process.  Basically I've completed all parts of the plan except for evaluating the results.  I plan to start the evaluation process on Thursday, March 26, 2009.  On this date I plan to use a panel of five people (guinea pigs) to test the product and give me feedback.  The five people I have chosen represent five different types of potential customers.

Since this is Version 1.0, and the product is an e-learning application, I am looking at the product as an ever-evolving work in progress.  Right now, the goal is to get it "launchable" and to a level where we can sell it to high-end clients.  We have differentiated ourselves significantly with this new model, and are confident that even though upgrades can be made we can still be competitive in a high-end market.

The only Step I had a hard time with was Step 3.  In starting this process I had to terminate the relationship with the first web developer that I hired, which cost me over a week of valuable time.  The big problem was that I didn't have a backup developer... A valuable lesson was learned here:  I should have spent more quality time evaluating all possible scenarios.

It wasn't too big of a loss in this case.  Someone recently reminded me though, "Your first loss is your cheapest."