Retrospective: CQ Vision, Mission, and Value Statements

The CQ Vision, Mission, and Value Statements project was successfully completed without issue. The product is a new Vision Statement, Mission Statement, and nine Value Statements for Cryptiquest which will be used to guide content, projects, and policies moving forward.

Objective Test

Objective	Test
The project will define the change Cryptiquest aims to bring about in the world.	Pass
The project will present the definition in such a way that parts of it can be referred to when establishing the needs of projects.	Pass
The project will present the definition in such a way that parts of it can be referred to when measuring the success of projects.	Pass

Crux

This project exceeded expectations and the few setbacks it experienced serve to support the need for an official Guide to Project Management. Meanwhile the lessons learned from previous projects are improving workflow.

Project History

This project was spurred during the retrospective for the first phase of the Online Notes project, when it was revealed that the project would have benefited from tying its objectives to a broader, non-existent company value system.

The first session focused on explaining the need, defining the goal, working out the objectives, and discovering any required tools. This all went very well. There weren’t any missing tools discovered and the session ended with a solid definition of the goal and objectives.

The second session was dedicated to defining the deliverables. Working through this process revealed a need for a new project: a new Road Map. There was a mishap where planning the Road Map was incorporated as a deliverable for this project – but that was avoided after reconsideration based on lessons previously learned. There were some miscalculations regarding time estimates for the deliverables:

Deliverable	ESTIMATE	ACTUAL
Define the Vision	1 hr	2 hrs
Define the Mission	1 hr	6 hrs
Identify each Value based on the Vision and Mission	3 hrs	4 hrs
Seek feedback from confidants and refine	2 days	1 day
Seek feedback from strangers and refine	2 days	1 day
Update the company About Page	1 hr	4 hours
Create Press Release	1 hr	5 hours
Social media announcements	1 hr	h hr

The third session focused on forming the vision and mission statements while the fourth session focused on forming the value statements. Both sessions were fruitful without issues.

The fifth session was a recap of getting feedback, implementing the statements, and publishing a press release. In hindsight, it would have been helpful to actually dedicate a session for the press release as this one was more robust than normal and it would have been helpful to have a work space to suss out ideas. Otherwise, the feedback and implementation were fine without a dedicated session.

Lessons Learned

1. Deliverable estimations were originally measured in units of “sessions” and it was vague and confusing.
2. Deliverable estimations for certain tasks take downtime into consideration and it’s confusing.
3. Deliverable estimations were way off for this project.
4. The Press Release should have had its own session.

Lessons Addressed

The first lesson is easy to solve as time should use hours/days as default.

The second lesson also seems easy to solve as time estimates for deliverables should only take developer time into consideration.

The third lesson is a little tougher to address. Perhaps an estimated time range (min – max) would make more sense rather than one specific time as it would force the question “What is the worst case scenario?” for a dose of reality.

The fourth lesson is easy to address as every deliverable should start as a session.

Action Items

• Items to Add to the Cryptiquest Guide to Project Management
  • All time estimates/actuals should be displayed in hours/days.
  • All time estimates/actuals should account for developer time only.
  • Time estimates should be presented as a min-max range.
  • Each deliverable should always start as a session.