At the beginning of every project, you have a list of expected challenges.
Solving them is in the plan.
The solution may not be obvious yet, but the need to solve it definitely is.
Then there are the surprises. Every project has those too!
Experience helps avoid them, but you can’t be experienced at everything.
If you want to be successful, it’s important to not let the surprises distract you completely from the things you already knew about.
Since you’ve known about them a while, you’ve probably been thinking about them.
You’ve got a solution or two rolling around in your head.
But it’s not on paper yet (or in CAD, or code, or…).
So it’s not actually solved. It’s still just an idea.
We almost fell in that trap a week or so ago.
We found a fix for the big surprise.
But then we ran up against a time crunch to get the “known” challenge solved.
And all of a sudden the ideas in our heads didn’t seem so good.
Fortunately, we’ve got a great team, and we got together to brainstorm a real solution.
It ended up being a pretty even mix of each of our individual ideas.
And better than any one of them alone.
Don’t let surprises derail your plans.
But when they do, get all the help you can to get back on track.
-Brian Schoolcraft
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