Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management

Chapter 13. The User's Needs

You may find it hard to believe, but my son, Jake, is named after Jake Blues, the character John Belushi played in the movie "The Blues Brothers". I actually wanted to call him Elwood (my son, not John Belushi), after Jake's brother, because without the "Blues" last name, Jake sounded a little too much like a soap star to me. And any way, Elwood is a much more unusual name; people remember you if your name is Elwood.

Jenny had a different opinion of the name Elwood, and after many long discussions, I gave in and we named the kid Jake. Of course now Jake is Jake, and any other name would be ridiculous. I'm holding out for Elwood to be the name of our next dog, but Jenny hasn't made any promises.

This only matters because the next week and a half sort of reminded me of the movie "The Blues Brothers." We had an objective to achieve, a short time in which to achieve it, and nothing was going to get in our way. Events moved at a frenetic pace, and we had a hell of a good time. In retrospect, developing the preliminary design was probably the most fun of the whole assignment.

While Sheila, Stu, and I worked out options and assessed them, Amanda began earning her pay as user's rep. By Thursday she came to me with a list of users that was a lot longer than I had expected.

"The union steward, what's she doing on here?" I asked. "There's no labor relations involved."

"Not quite true, Will," Amanda told me. "We're going to be hiring about 30 new people to work ...