Do you feel as if you are always behind on your project? That someone—or several someones—started before you or your team started this project?
It's not your imagination. They did.
At the very least, a product leader or someone on the portfolio team said, “If we created a project to do A thing for B customers, we could see C return.”
Or, a research team did a spike of some sort to prove that the project is doable.
But someone, somewhere, started a little buzz about this project.
That's why projects always start before you think they do.
(I first wrote this in Manage It!. You can read more about how to iterate on everything in that book and why you might want to in Project Lifecycles.)
(Yes, I plan to have a series of “project minute” posts.)